Seeing the latest works from photographer Tim Walker in Italian Vogue - a series entitled 'Like A Doll', I was instantly reminded of the work of Laurie Simmons, a photographer recently recommended to me by a tutor.
Revisiting childhood memories via the use of childhood objects, feminist photographer Laurie Simmons manipulates dolls and ventriloquist dummies to create scenes which reference domestic life. As Sarah Chapman states in an interview with Simmons, we women were ‘raised, in a way, to be housewives’ (1992), an idea which Simmons seems to parody in her surreal photographs of constructed dollhouse scenes. Speaking of her work, the artist claims ‘I was simply trying to re-create a feeling, a mood, from the time that I was growing up… they’re about our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts’ (1992). In the same interview, she recalls the method of collecting toys she had as child from a toy store’s attic, down the same branding. Compulsive collecting of childhood ephemera such as this emphasizes to me the ability of such dolls to stimulate childhood memories and experiences, which Simmons cleverly uses to subvert and reconstruct a narrative, as seen in such pieces as greyscale photographic work ‘Kitchen / Woman in Corner (1976)’, above left. The high angle shot shows a kitchen scene, in which first we almost do not even notice the female figure shut away in the corner; she has almost become a part of the room itself, suggesting the oppressive and almost suffocating atmosphere of this domestic setting. Perhaps the most powerful element of Simmons work in my eyes is her ability to correlate the child’s doll with the woman’s future – these scenes are able to manipulate childhood items to suggest and reject a traditional female fate.
