Laurie Simmons
‘Tourism; Las Vegas (Foxy, 2nd View)”
1984
Cibachrome print.
40 x 60 inches
Edition of 1, plus 1 AP
$ 40,000.00
Laurie Simmons (born October 3, 1949) is an American artist, photographer and filmmaker. Since the mid-1970s, Simmons has staged scenes for her camera with dolls, ventriloquist dummies, objects on legs, and people, to create photographs that reference domestic scenes. She is part of The Pictures Generation, a name given to a group of artists from a 2009 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that includes Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and Louise Lawler.
The Tourism Series (1984): The series that followed was “Tourism,” in 1984, which also used the “Teenette” dolls, but showed them in groups visiting famous places around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal. This series investigated the mediation of these places through photography and media instead of real experience. “She used the same strategy to shoot the “Tourism” series as she used for the “Color-Coordinated Interiors,” populating unrealistically pristine postcard views with her dolls via rear projection. The figures are color-cued to the background scene, which was often unintentionally monochromatic due owing to the poor quality of the slide.” The slides were collected by Simmons from tourist shops and museum collections.