Laurie Simmons

Laurie Simmons: Empty doll’s houses in black and white

Laurie Simmons was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York on 3 October 1949. The daughter of a dentist and a housewife, she grew up in her parents' Jewish community and was stamped by this environment. She attended the Tyler School of Art and Architecture where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1971. She began her career as a photographer in the 1970s and first attracted attention with her black and white pictures of a doll's house, which established her most important trademark early on in her work. Laurie Simmons photographed the house in an empty state and added a housewife doll for further shots, which she staged seated and standing in various positions - even upside down. In a further development of this concept, she decorated dolls' rooms with small replicas of iconic and therefore easily recognisable works of art. In retrospect, Laurie Simmons described this Black Series as the strongest part of her early work. 

Doll’s games in aquariums, on horseback and travelling the world

Laurie Simmons added colour photography to her oeuvre in 1978. Her Early Colour Interiors were created at a time when colour photography still had a reputation for commercialism and was suspected of embellishment, while black and white photography claimed to be authentic and artistic. However, the imaginative, colourful places of longing that Simmons created were very popular, and she began photographing cowboy figures in the style of old western films. Further series with dolls followed - in aquariums (Water Ballet, 1979-1981), in front of famous sights (Tourism, 1984) and in various items of clothing (Clothes Make the Man). In collaboration with the architect Peter Wheelwright, Simmons designed an interactive doll's house, which she called Kaleidoscope House (2001) and decorated with miniature artworks by contemporary artists. In 2006, she made her first film, The Music of Regret, with Hollywood cinematographer Ed Lachman and actress Meryl Streep.

Feminist art in sometimes whimsical pictorial language

As an artist, Laurie Simmons explores the role of women in society. Her dolls' houses are joined by cakes, weapons and musical instruments, a combination that often provokes scepticism, especially from feminists who vehemently reject dolls as a typically female cliché. Simmons does not let herself be fazed by this, nor by the dominance of men in painting, which in her day ultimately led her to opt for the medium of photography. Laurie Simmons has received awards and honours for her art, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1984) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1997) as well as the Distinguished Alumni Award from Temple University (2006).

Laurie Simmons lives and works in New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut. She is married to the painter Carroll Dunham (born 1949), and their daughter is the actress Lena Dunham (born 1986).