Latest Laurie Simmons Quotes from Interviews

I use people that are close to me, like a studio assistant or a friend, someone I know who's going to really enjoy it. It's important to me to have men inside there, too, because so many dollers are men. It's putting me into a pretty odd headspace, the shooting, because I understand the motivation of these dollers to dress up. There's a way that you start to prefer the reality of that world to your own world. It's so much more beautiful.

Laurie Simmons

Beautiful, Motivation, Reality

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I feel like I've finally got to this place that I really want to be. The place where, in my fantasy, the characters just get up and walk around - this interstitial place between humans and dolls. But I also feel like, where am I supposed to go from here? Because this feels like the place I've always wanted to be, for my whole life of shooting.

Laurie Simmons

Character, Fantasy, Whole Life

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
When I first came to New York, in the '70s, artists were certainly divided about the Andy Warhol persona, and about the work. I thought it was utterly cool - I thought the Factory was utterly glamorous - but there were a lot of artists I really admired and respected who were older that kind of dismissed it, couldn't get it, and felt that there was a lack of seriousness about it.

Laurie Simmons

Artist, Kind, Warhol

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I teach a graduate photo seminar at Yale, and I sometimes feel so overwhelmed by the task the students set before themselves to be artists, because - it seems so quaint, but when I picked up a camera with a group of other women, I'm not gonna say it was a radical act, but we were certainly doing it in some sort of defiance of, or reaction to, a male-dominated world of painting.

Laurie Simmons

Artist, World, Students

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
The visual world has blown up, the world of writing has blown up; there's so much text online. Anyone and everyone can express themselves. It's a lot to think about as an artist. Also, that the persona of the artist might actually be of some importance. When I came of age, it was important to be quiet and hang back and be mysterious. I knew artists who didn't even want to show up at their own openings. They never wanted to have their picture taken, didn't want to autograph a book, didn't want to answer a question. I came of age in a world where it was "Let the work speak for itself."

Laurie Simmons

Book, Taken, Writing

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
The thing I wondered about so much as a young artist, particularly when things weren't going well and I was really struggling, was, "Will I know when to give up? Will I know when I've suffered enough rejection? Will I know when to get out?"

Laurie Simmons

Giving Up, Struggle, Artist

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
Here were also moments of, you know, you have an exhibition: no sale, no reviews. It's hard not to get blue, and I think the kids were very aware of those periods. So if there's anything they've picked up, it's a kind of resiliency. That seems like a pretty good legacy.

Laurie Simmons

Kids, Thinking, Legacy

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
My father was a dentist. And my mother was a - do we still say "housewife"? A home engineer.

Laurie Simmons

Mother, Father, Home

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I remember years ago hearing a gynecologist say, "Women report a great sense of calm and well-being post-menopause." This was way before I was even thinking about it, but I thought, "Hmm, that might be something to look forward to. A sense of well-being!"

Laurie Simmons

Thinking, Calm, Remember

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I think the big news there - most post-menopausal women I know are not celibate.

Laurie Simmons

Thinking

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
When you're getting ready, you finally reach a point where your clothes are right and your hair and makeup are right, and you're not comparing yourself to anyone. It's a really great moment. Then you get to the party and it's like, "Oh my god, I'm wearing the wrong thing! I'm garish!" or "I'm underdressed!"

Laurie Simmons

Party, Makeup, Moments

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I feel like I spent so much time trying to understand my identity and my identity as an artist. But when all is said and done, at this age, I feel the most like I felt when I was 11. And all those talents I had when I was 11 and 12 - I'm letting them sort of happen again. I can't speak for men, but for women - we go back to a kind of pre-adolescent state when we were superfree and supercool.

Laurie Simmons

Artist, Men, Age

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I do remember at my very first opening in 1979 another artist coming up to me, and he was haranguing me, saying, "Did you really intend for these things to be so dumb? You just put it there and took a picture of it." He wouldn't let it go. So that's what made me think about the dumbness aspect more.

Laurie Simmons

Artist, Thinking, Dumb

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I think I'm still, in many ways, a terribly self-conscious person. I'd probably be shooting and think, "Well, how does my hair look?"

Laurie Simmons

Thinking

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I've always gone for a kind of perfection. In the end, it's so much better to get the feeling of, "Wow, she's so perfect," from a doll than to have to bear that from a woman in a magazine.

Laurie Simmons

Perfect, Perfection, Feelings

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
The challenge has always been to wrest emotion out of a doll face that we think of as only having one emotion. It's moving a light, moving my camera; it's just this mental investment that I make, and suddenly, everything changes.

Laurie Simmons

Moving, Thinking, Challenges

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
I think making features has got to be in the addiction category.

Laurie Simmons

Thinking, Addiction, Categories

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
I feel like an artist often turns the camera on themselves and on their own families to understand who they are.

Laurie Simmons

Artist, Cameras, Turns

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
You mine your own past in order to get to know yourself.

Laurie Simmons

Past, Order, Know Yourself

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
The thing that a lot of people may or may not know is every artist is a cinephile, whether they watch movies whether they're painting, or have films that influence them.

Laurie Simmons

Artist, People, Watches

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
I'm not interested in telling a story in my photographic work. I'm more interested in freezing certain moments in time.

Laurie Simmons

Stories, Moments, Certain

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Oh god, success is so exhausting.

Laurie Simmons

Exhausting

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
I always try so hard to find a male doll and shoot a male doll, and it always kind of implodes. Whenever I use men, they're so scary and so dark, and I can never find this sort of lightness or this place between doll and human that I find with female dolls.

Laurie Simmons

Dark, Men, Scary

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
The challenge has always been to wrest emotion out of a [doll's] face that we think of as only having one emotion. It's moving a light, moving my camera; it's just this mental investment that I make, and suddenly, everything changes. Parenthetically, I have to say, I don't particularly like dolls, nor have I ever liked them. That's something I really wanted to get out there right away.

Laurie Simmons

Moving, Thinking, Light

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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Born: October 3, 1949
Occupation: Visual Artist
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