Laurie Simmons began taking pictures professionally as a young woman in the 1970s. She shot homey scenes— kitchens stocked with food, living rooms with sofas and TVs. Except really tiny, because she only photographed doll furniture. Critics connected Simmons’ work with that of her friends Cindy Sherman and Sarah Charlesworth, fellow photographers who were also subverting outmoded feminine ideals.
Since then, Simmons has continued to use the camera to question our strange relationship with gender: she’s photographed accessories like watches and handbags dancing on human legs, Japanese love dolls in states of ennui, and women with realistic eyes painted on their closed eyelids.
Simmons’ daughter is Lena Dunham. Before the TV show “Girls,” Dunham’s breakout film “Tiny Furniture” was inspired by her mother’s art. Simmons also plays the artist mom in the film — a crabbier version of herself.
For our special episode of artists talking with artists, Simmons sat down to chat with Molly Ringwald about her career as a pioneering artist — and being directed by her daughter.
Molly Ringwald: I couldn’t help but notice when we played that clip from “Tiny Furniture,” I think you blushed and you grabbed your face in horror.
Laurie Simmons: I find Siri to be an excruciating character. I give a lot of credit to my daughter to get me to go to that place. People who saw the film assume that’s who I am. I do feel sort of embarrassed. I don’t know how I did that.
I read somewhere that you don’t really like dolls that much. How did your work with dolls happen?
My assumption was the camera could tell lies. I tricked myself into thinking that the small-scale rooms could be confused to human-scale rooms. When I was buying all this dollhouse furniture, it would come with people who I would toss into a corner of my studio. So one day I just picked one up and started using it. Everything changed that day.
There weren’t that many female photographers doing what you were doing. You must have really wanted it.
I sort of sneaked into art school. Because somehow my parents saw that I could potentially be someone's wife with artistic talent and I could show my paintings in the PTA show. My mother said, "You can go to art school as long as you get a teaching degree so you have something to fall back on." Which is what mothers always said. You needed a fallback, in case you got divorced. So I did go to art school, but managed to never get the teaching degree. My daughters will always say, “How did you make it happen?” They give me a lot of praise. But as you know, when you're in the middle of it, you're not thinking about how special you are. You're thinking about how you're going to make it work.
