Edited by Lynne Tillman. Introduction by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. Text by Laurie Simmons.
Throughout her career, photographer Laurie Simmons (1949) has staged scenes with dolls, dummies and occasionally people for her camera. In the fall of 2009, Simmons opened a new chapter to her work and ordered a customized, high-end “Love Doll” from Japan. The surrogate sex partner arrived in a crate, clothed in a transparent slip and accompanied by a separate box containing an engagement ring and genitalia. Simmons documented her photographic relationship with this human scale “girl,” depicting the lifelike, latex doll in an ongoing series of “actions”--each shown and titled chronologically from the day Simmons received the doll up to the present, describing the relationship she developed with her model. The first days of somewhat formal and shy poses give way to an ever-increasing familiarity and comfort level as time passes. A second doll arrived one year later. This new character, and the interaction between the two, reveal yet another dynamic in composition, both formal and psychological. In search of a stage for her Love Doll, Simmons turned to her own home, transforming it into an artfully staged, color coordinated, oversized dollhouse. A tale of disquieting adult fantasy, desire and regret, The Love Doll accompanies the complete photographic series with the artist’s diary entries and is printed on a special paper to evoke the touch of a Love Doll’s skin.
Featured image is reproduced from Laurie Simmons: The Love Doll.
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In these staged photos, the doll scales walls, takes bubbles baths, and, along the way, become a regular part of Simmons' life.
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"The Love Doll Day 23 (Kitchen)" (2010) is reproduced from Laurie Simmons' diaristic 2012 collection of photographs of a high-end, human-scale Japanese Love Doll in surprising domestic settings. "I found her a kitchen at a rummage sale," Simmons writes. "It reminded me of a kid’s size version of the toy kitchen I photographed in the late 1970s. Still feels 'toy,' but much closer to life size. The enormous cupcakes. Huge by human standards, but in her world, in her kitchen, they are gigantic. I love this pose. The doll is finally taking a break from playing." Simmons' new work is on view at the Jewish Museum March 13-August 9. continue to blog
As seemingly all the world gears up for this weekend's second season premiere of Lena Dunham's "cruelly insightful and rigorously downbeat comedy," Girls, we thought it appropriate to feature new work by Laurie Simmons, key member of the Pictures Generation, bona fide international art star, and, yes, Dunham's mother. (Okay, she was also great as the art star / mother character in Dunham's breakout first film, Tiny Furniture.) Featured image, "The Love Doll, Day 11 (Yellow)" (2010), is reproduced from The Love Doll, Simmons recent book of photographs of high-end Japanese sex dolls in various domestic settings and character roles. In her introduction, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn writes, "Practical and ruefully domestic, Simmons brought the doll to her Connecticut home, where the house was re-purposed into a color-coordinated, oversized dollhouse, and so began her brilliant blur of art and life, studio and home. The 1912 Colonial house plays a central role in the photographs, and lends the work an air of intimacy and authenticity. Real-blue sky; black and white tile floor, and wainscoting replace Simmons’ once smallscale model interiors. The family’s dog and cat roam in and out of a few scenes. Real-life and art-fiction find their way into the photographs, and our rapport with the Love Doll grows." Like mother, like daughter. Simmons will sign copies of The Love Doll next Wednesday, January 16, at Dashwood Books, New York. continue to blog
Friends, fans and family of Laurie Simmons gathered this Wednesday evening at Dashwood Books in SoHo for the signing and launch of Simmons' new book, The Love Doll, published by Baldwin Gallery / Salon 94 Gallery / Tomio Koyama Gallery / Wilkinson Gallery. Notable guests, including Glenn O’Brien, Bill Powers, Anne Christenson, Jeanne Greenberg-Rohatyn, Lisa Phillips, Ari Marcopoulos and Simmons’ daughter, the recent Golden Globe winner Lena Dunham, were in attendance to celebrate the book, which collects Simmons' photographs of one, then two, life size surrogate sex dolls from Japan. continue to blog
Wednesday, September 18, from 6 - 8 PM, artist Laurie Simmons and writer Glenn O’Brien will discuss various subjects including dolls and artifice, sexuality and identity, imagination and physicality, fetishism and the evolution of gender identities, archtypes and taboos, as well as the specific processes of taking photographs and making movies. continue to blog
Published by Baldwin Gallery/Salon 94 Gallery/Tomio Koyama Gallery/Wilkinson Gallery. Edited by Lynne Tillman. Introduction by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. Text by Laurie Simmons.
Throughout her career, photographer Laurie Simmons (1949) has staged scenes with dolls, dummies and occasionally people for her camera. In the fall of 2009, Simmons opened a new chapter to her work and ordered a customized, high-end “Love Doll” from Japan. The surrogate sex partner arrived in a crate, clothed in a transparent slip and accompanied by a separate box containing an engagement ring and genitalia. Simmons documented her photographic relationship with this human scale “girl,” depicting the lifelike, latex doll in an ongoing series of “actions”--each shown and titled chronologically from the day Simmons received the doll up to the present, describing the relationship she developed with her model. The first days of somewhat formal and shy poses give way to an ever-increasing familiarity and comfort level as time passes. A second doll arrived one year later. This new character, and the interaction between the two, reveal yet another dynamic in composition, both formal and psychological. In search of a stage for her Love Doll, Simmons turned to her own home, transforming it into an artfully staged, color coordinated, oversized dollhouse. A tale of disquieting adult fantasy, desire and regret, The Love Doll accompanies the complete photographic series with the artist’s diary entries and is printed on a special paper to evoke the touch of a Love Doll’s skin.
