Laurie Simmons

The career of American photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons is among the defining hallmarks of the Pictures Generation, a wave of artists who emerged in the 70s and 80s to open critical dialogues on the influence of images themselves, their deeper politics, and their roles in shaping cultural norms.

This cohort, which included Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Robert Heinecken, among others, might be considered the first to be considered as not photographers, but artists working with photography. And in broad strokes the motivations of the Pictures Generation were to cut through the surfaces of romance and beauty in photography by adopting strategies that helped to reveal the dark underbellies of popular images.

Simmons’ legacy during this period is broadly recognized for her use of dolls, toys, puppets, and other objects that recall upbringing in American suburbia. Through these subjects, the artist injects subversive commentary beneath their typical superficialities. In Talking Objects (1987-1989), Simmons employs ventriloquist dolls, disquieting subjects designed to entertain, but which encompass deeper and more sinister suggestions of power, control, and the subjugation of agency.

Throughout the reading of Talking Objects, we find that Simmons not only embraces but further exaggerates the anthropomorphic features of these objects. Through dramatized, theatrical lighting and suggestions for formal portraiture, the artist pushes the absurdity beyond the boundaries of realistic expectation, providing viewers the opportunity to draw insights from the wreckage of believability. And what might these insights consist of? The prevalence of artifice within hyper-saturated media conditions, the reflections of truths that are buried beneath such pretense, and, perhaps most significantly, our own human difficulties in being able to discern which is which.