Laurie Simmons: Big Camera/Little Camera

Accompanying
a major survey of the American artist Laurie Simmons, this generously
illustrated book features every important step of her ever-evolving
career--from small black-and-white photographs of miniature furniture to
large-scale, full color images featuring life-sized Japanese dolls.
Gender
roles and identity, reality and its distortion, and the psychologically
loaded myth of "normal life" are recurrent themes in Laurie Simmons's
work. Taken chronologically, her career has followed a trajectory from
miniature to full size, black-and-white to color, mechanical to human.
Over more than four decades, the artist's authentic gaze has remained
unflinching, whether she is composing tableaux of plastic figurines and
props, or painting the eyelids of glamorous models and transforming them
into doll-like humans with an unsettling stare. Her well-known series,
such as "Walking and Lying Objects" and "The Instant Decorator," are
featured here along with lesser-known series that explore underwater
photography, self-portraiture, and a feature film starring Meryl Streep
and a plastic dummy. The book includes an essay on Simmons's early
iconic photographs, while other writings take closer looks at specific
and more recent series. Renowned art historian and curator Michael
Auping's interview with Simmons rounds out this book.