Laurie Simmons

The photographer Laurie Simmons’s work consist of mostly minimal interior spaces which she meticulously furnishes with miniature, couches, rugs, wallpaper, art etc. If any forms of nature are present they are as artificial as the people. These “still lives” are to suggest at the windowless office building, the climate controlled supermalls, the newly built home, all perfectly controlled, perfectly artificial environments, that we as culture rely so heavily and spend so much time in. Simmons’s photographs of pseudo- characters in pseudo- situations constitute reality in a time were people spend there lives in synthetic settings. Exploring the idea of detachment form nature in her piece Chicken Dinner Simmons shows two identical dummies sitting at a bar one in a casual white dress shirt the other in a bow time and jacket. With their desires bubbled above their heads we get a look at what they long for. The casual dummy dreams of a chicken dinner typical of the mass produced TV dinners that are frozen, dehydrated then effortlessly reconstituted in a microwave, easy and artificial. The genteel dummy imaginings a cowboy, a long step from his current existence but the cowboy of his dreams is clean cut, well dressed, and handsome not the a true cowboy, but a media representation , just as false and lifeless as the dummy himself these confusion of the true reality vs. the synthetic version is Simmons focus when it comes to this body of work, in her manipulation of space, lighting and color Simmons exaggerates the visually synthetic with neon colors multidirectional lighting and staged scenes. She does this in order to tie theses amplified forms of cultural role models back to their media sources. “The strong athlete, the successful business man, the nurturing homemaker” these pieces are put forth to warn against the lure of media and the portraits of mass produced people it presents and to promote the hunt for the natural experience over the contemporary.