Laurie Simmons: Big Camera / Little Camera (Non-mint)

Hardcover | 25.45 x 3 x 32.56 cm | 256 pp 

Prestel | 2018 | 9783791357621

Silver leatherette cover with black foil stamping and silver gilding on the book block.

Accompanying a major survey of the work of the American artist Laurie Simmons, this generously illustrated book features every important step of her ever-evolving career, from small black-and-white photographs of miniature furniture to large-scale, full colour images featuring life-sized Japanese dolls. 

Gender roles and identity, reality and its distortion, and the psychologically loaded myth of “normal life” are recurrent themes in Laurie Simmons’s work. Taken chronologically, her career has followed a trajectory from miniature to full size, black-and-white to colour, mechanical to human. Over more than four decades, the artist’s authentic gaze has remained unflinching, whether she is composing tableaux of plastic figurines and props, or painting the eyelids of glamorous models and transforming them into doll-like humans with an unsettling stare. Her well-known series, such as “Walking and Lying Objects” and “The Instant Decorator,” are featured here along with lesser-known series that explore underwater photography, self-portraiture, and a feature film starring Meryl Streep and a plastic dummy.

The book includes an essay on Simmons's early iconic photographs, while other writings take closer looks at specific and more recent series. Renowned art historian and curator Michael Auping’s interview with Simmons rounds out this book.

PLEASE NOTE: This book is a NON-MINT item. NON-MINT books are new but are either ex-display copies or warehouse marked - minor cosmetic imperfections such as scuffs, marks, or minor dents to the covers.