LAURIE SIMMONS ON FRIENDSHIP, LOVE DOLLS AND WALKING OBJECTS

Alex Bennett talks to Laurie Simmons, an American artist, photographer and filmmaker.

Alex Bennett
Casting the net broadly, I want to think about two terms that I see resonating in your work: magic and perfection. It seems to me both terms have similarities: with perfection, the impression is of a singular, laboured over, complete thing, but obviously there’s a level of concealment. It’s similar to magic in that sense, but the intent and motivation is more impulsive, momentary and transient. I wonder if you felt like in your work, you’ve reconciled those two terms and the way they behave? In some cases they are oppositional, with magic there’s the impression that it cannot be replicated, it is epiphanic, whereas with perfection there’s something more fabricated.

Laurie Simmons
It’s really lovely to be asked about magic because I think about magic so much but I never talk about it. However, I do talk about perfection, and particularly in my early work, portraying a kind of perfection that was pervasive in post-WW11 America, within the idea that appearances were everything, that surface perfection was something to be upheld — along with religion and morality — that perfection was as important as anything else.

So much of my work has been about appearances. But the magic part comes in trying to recreate all these ideas and feelings and understanding that a little bit of magic or alchemy occurs between my props, my lighting and my camera.

We can put all of these elements together, but if the shoot works, it’s going to be about magic. And I never really talk about that. I think that those two threads are in my work, and I don’t think they’re at odds—I think they need each other.

I saw a talk you gave at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and you brought up all these interesting references to cartoons and childhood animation, where these objects, cutlery for instance, start having this very strange ontology, they sprout legs and start walking. There’s something interesting and playful about it, but it’s like those objects were looking for a kind of revenge.

I would say sinister. Within the lovely, beautiful, surface appearance of the cartoon—which is all fun and fantasy—just scratch the surface and the message is very sinister.

That extends to ventriloquism in a way, there’s this magic at play with the dummy, but ventriloquism is a performance of an otherworldly voice that relates to gender. In my limited understanding of this history, it’s often been a man and a man’s dummy and there’s an odd masculinity and relationship between those two things. The dummy speaks this unconscious thought, but it comes from the person who controls it. There’s a weird masochism at work.

When I started to visit this place called Vent Haven, which is a ventrioloquial atifacts museum, I found hundreds of press photos of all these ventriloquists and I made the work, Girl Vent Press Shots (1989), which is 25 press images that I photographed of women and their dummies, so there is a history of women ventriloquists. That said, the only ventriloquists that I was exposed to as a child were male.
One of the levels that I love thinking about in relation to ventriloquism, is that for little children in the 1950s this was hi-tech entertainment; it was the equivalent of Star Wars. Here was this person, this magician who could literally throw his voice into a doll; the other aspect for us little kids was that the dummy was always an alter ego who could say everything the ventriloquist and us kids were not allowed to say. It was like angel/devil, and the doll was always an alter ego that was given permission to act out and be rude. Since the dummy was much more the size we were, it looked to us like an angry kid.

In terms of what you mentioned about speech and ventriloquism, the permission to act-out, I see in relation to a much later series, the Kigurumi, Dollers and How We See (2014). What’s so fascinating to me is that there is no voice, no speech--rather, such a different sense of embodiment. What kind of impression do you have from the people that embody these dolls, and interact in public as these characters — what is it that you feel like they might be conveying in ways they can’t achieve in their everyday?

I think that it’s a very simple way to change gender; I’ve read and seen as much as I could, but my understanding is that for some of the people that perform cosplay, it’s a way, for example, for a young boy to inhabit the persona of a woman. It often doesn’t have anything to do with sexuality; it’s a way to inhabit the other gender. The thing that really interested me about the Kigurumi masks — I put one on and I didn’t really like wearing it — you can see through the eye-holes, but with these large pupils and eyes that are like coloured plastic, what you see is a cloudy version of life. It felt like crossing over into death in some way, you “see” but not only is it very cloudy and misty, but you need to be led around by a helper because your own vision is impaired. You could barely get around on your own; there was a kind of passivity in the whole idea of inhabiting this persona and being led around the shopping mall.

On a personal level, I really felt that I was in the presence of a doll that had come to life. I dressed my models in latex outfits, a latex skin called a zentai suit that the maskers wear, yet they could respond to my commands. I always had the same person wear the same mask, so over time they developed a persona – a bond with their character, and so I knew what to expect. The longer they wore it, the more they became that character; they would start out more tentatively. They seemed to really love their character and there appeared this gradual conversion.

I often felt sad when they unmasked, because I missed the character. I came to feel so much affection for the character.

That’s why it can perhaps become quite addictive for some people, that you inhabit a space and it allows you to convey certain things you weren’t able to before. It becomes prosthesis in some sense, and a haven.

Yes, I wonder if that’s how people feel with Second Life and their avatars.

I think that’s what’s happening, that it’s possible to appreciate your second self, your avatar, your online persona. It’s possible to feel better about that version of yourself.

It’s interesting how you mention the dolls and Kigurumi as often unrelated to sexuality. In that sense, if we think about The Love Doll (2009-2011) series, it feels as though for the people who collect these dolls, live around these dolls, that sexuality is a very small component or charge for them. It seems to be more a kind of care, it’s grooming, there’s this upkeep that is necessary. It’s interesting to think about dolls and care, the way the relationship with dolls in adulthood grows into something more like companionship.

Exactly, companionship. It seems pointless to have judgments about the way people live their lives, particularly if they’re not hurting anyone. But I found on a human level, those who collect the love dolls to be a bit upsetting for me, in terms of the individual’s isolation and their ability to have relationships with humans versus their relationships with dolls. At a certain point I found it so upsetting that I didn’t think I would keep shooting The Love Doll, I was kind of taking the doll out of its context and using it because it’s a life-size doll. There is information and an aura around it; I found oftentimes that I was working against that. But it is interesting to make the connection between the caring and feeding of a doll, the way a young girl might relate and identify with her doll, creating her classic imaginary friend. And then to think of a grown man doing the very same thing, finding comfort, companionship, and oftentimes a sexual outlet — I mean that’s what they’re made for.

Talking of alienation, you’ve spoken in previous interviews about Hatsune Miku, the hologram girl that has sold-out concerts. There’s something very unusual about girl forms that are used as a surrogate to embed fan fictions, or utilised for personal narratives. It reminds of me of Azuma—a virtual home robot, she’s a domestic hologram girl. The advert is incredibly sad.

I think it comes back to your very first question about perfection. Isn’t this, in a heterosexual model, a way for a man to have a woman, be it a love doll, or a domestic robot, to have a woman without any of the ‘headaches’, or ‘wife jokes’ that come along with it.

It feels like it might become the next direction of the doll, that it will become immaterial and integrated into a domestic space.

Hatsune Miku is such a striking example, I met with the creator of the company, and Hatsune Miku is partially created by the fans—the Crypton company makes her persona evolve in this way. She’s interacted so much with the fans around her, who created music and clothes for her. It was a magical interaction. At the centre of it was this untouchable, perfect being.

I’d like to talk about your friendship with Jimmy DeSana. How did the two of you become such good friends?

We met accidentally on the subway with a group of friends, we were both looking for a place to live, and a 200 ft long x 20 ft wide loft in an industrial space had become available, and I couldn’t afford it myself. So we said, let’s split it. He took the back 100 ft facing Mercer St. and I took the front 100 ft. facing Broadway — back when Soho was very quiet. We became very good friends by being roommates.
I had already started using photography—he had built a darkroom, I built a darkroom, but he was so much more advanced, he studied photography and I never had. For the few years that we lived together, we had a very interactive work/friendship relationship. I learned so much from him. That would’ve been 1972, and he died in 1990, and he left his estate for me to manage. So we only lived together in the Broadway space for a few years, they were formative years for both of us. He taught me so much about photography, and I brought him out of the photography world and more into the world of art. We had good synergy and in a sense he was my mentor but we worked together a lot. I was his model mostly so I could be around him, watching him shoot; it felt like a convenient way to learn.

And he participated in your Walking Objects (1989-1991) series.

Yes he was the first one; he was the camera, Jimmy the Camera. At that point it was 1987, he had been diagnosed with AIDS two years earlier. He was already thin and a little weak in 1987, I think we both knew that he would’nt live a long time, but we didn’t talk about it. He died three years later but in a way Jimmy the Camera was like a love picture, an homage to him. I couldn’t think of another person who would wear that prop, which came from the movie The Wiz. I tracked it down to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.

Are you often so particular about props and their lineage? Or are you quite happy to stumble across things and use what feels appropriate?

It’s both, I can stumble upon one prop that can create an entire series and two years of work, or I can go on a research mission online.

Regarding props and all the materials used in your photographs, how do you consider the tone of your work in a general sense? Because in some ways, if we think about the earlier works where you’re using the miniature dolls, my favourite image is the nearly overflowing sink...

That’s what I call Photo 1.

It’s such a great image because the simplicity is so charged and sinister. Yet, if we think about some of your work with the painted eyes, in that series the lighting is quite harsh, the colours are brighter, there’s more similarity with a fashion or cosmetic editorial. Do you consider there to be a constant tone through your work?

It’s so interesting that you picked what I consider to be my first photo. I see an absolute through-line, and I read a story. That’s what’s been so interesting about mounting a retrospective — that there’s twice the amount of work left out as there is hanging in the show. That really scared me because I see my work as like getting on a train and picking up passengers as I go along: from culture, from politics, the ideas come just from living. I see it as a story that I’m telling. With the museum show, we’re leaving out a lot of chapters from the story, or scenes from the play.

But I still felt that there was a through-line in the story, and that in some sense it’s about a female character inhabiting an interior space. I would say that in this first photo you mentioned, the female character is absent but very much there in spirit. In the painted eye photo, the female character is in her own interior space, the space of her mind. I tell myself the story and there’s never a point where I can’t follow my own narrative. But yes, the work becomes more political at times, more sinister, more playful, but as long as I’m here I’m still telling the same story.

But it’s interesting that in some of your early work, and I guess this relates to picking up passengers, is that the narrative always feels very self-contained, and there’s not a sense that there’s anything beyond the frame. What is photographed is all there is.

I’m so glad you’re saying that because one of the first decisions I made was that my images would be an instant but there would never be a blood stained knife, there would never be a clue. Never a sense of a before or after, or something on the brink of happening.

I’m thinking about the black-and-white image of the woman standing on her head and the utensils, one would think she would fall over. But I much prefer your description, that what is, is in the photo. There isn’t a long story, to boil it down: what you see is what you get.

On the retrospective, I’ve read that works you tend to view as your favourites are often considered by you as failures. Are those included?

Yes, what’s included are a few series that gallerists said they didn’t want to show. And these are the pictures that seem to be surprising people the most, and it makes me think a lot about holding onto your work, and believing in your work. That something might look a little better a little later to other people. So, there are a number of things that no one has ever seen, the Underneath pictures, and then also the Color Pictures that have the naked women in the interiors. Both of which haven’t been exhibited before. Also the black-and-white dolls underwater, Family Collision. I’m sitting in the middle of where all my early archives are right now, and there are boxes and boxes of things that people have yet to see.

One of my favourite series is the Café of the Inner Mind (1994), it builds on what we’ve mentioned about speech. That the images are not producing speech bubbles, but thought bubbles, seems much more conflicting. There’s this distanced interior monologue, which is quite cripplingly emotional, there’s a lot of pathos.

There are the dummies, these little men, and I grew up very much in a world of women, and I felt like boys and men were mysterious to me. So here are the dummies that have the ventriloquists speak through them, it was such a great metaphor for who’s lying and who’s truthful, and I thought, ‘what are their thoughts?’ I wanted to make their thoughts as cartoonish as their characters.

So much of your work is looking at characterisation, and the ways that people inhabit different selves and what that allows them to represent. I’m interested in the context or backdrop that’s already fabricated. I’m thinking of the series with Ardis Vinkler where you use maquettes, I wonder how you insinuate yourself within a template that’s already there. Do you bring characters to it?

I was going to an antique fair in New York and it was the end of day on a Sunday, and I saw those boxes and it was like electricity coursed through my body, I had to shoot them. The guy hadn’t sold them by the end of the show and I said ‘I would really love to photograph them, can I pay you, can I rent them?’ And he dropped them off at my studio and I thought how can I interrupt these, how can I make them my own. I started bringing my own characters to them; I had my little blue man doll, who was the companion to the pink doll that I used. The boxes were probably made in the 40s or 50s, I put my blue doll in and I decided that he would be Ardis Vinkler, and I had him staring at women like an artist or photographer, and I would put all kinds of parties inside. I used it as my set. It satisfied the desire to interrupt and own someone else’s artwork — which I think is a very common feeling for an artist.

Throughout your work, do you feel that there is a consideration of the relationship between ideas of authenticity and artifice, and artifice being the place of more authenticity for people? But also considering when artifice falls short, and where the limits of those two things are. Do you feel like that’s something you’re negotiating?

Yes, I think that artifice puts authenticity into high relief. Artifice forces people to deal with the reality that it imitates, and my policy has always been to be as authentic as I can possibly be within my fictional world. Excluding Pushing Lipstick (1979), I never break scale.

The light is realistic; the view from the window is appropriate. There are so many inherent limitations that it’s ridiculous, but within the way I work, I will reject things because it wouldn’t work in real life. There’s a lot of that focus on creating the most authentic reality I can within my fictional or inauthentic world.

But that seems to be such a challenge within your Love Doll series where the dolls are well articulated and well manufactured but in some ways they’re also a tabula rasa. What are the challenges in photographing a doll?

It’s trying to wrest emotion from a doll and we all know that a doll has one fixed expression. I’ll turn a light on a doll so that a new mood is generated; I know how to get emotion from plastic. That’s what I know how to do. Now I feel like I’m ready for human portraiture.

Can you tell me a little bit about the content of The Music of Regret? From the clips that I’ve seen, there’s Meryl Streep acting as a dummy, and vignettes of dolls having heart-breaking interactions with each other with moments of emotional breakdown. Can you tell me about the process of that work?

I wanted to say goodbye to the work I had made up to that point, and I wanted to make a musical. Act One is a very sad puppet story about jealousy, envy and regret. The second Act is very much about regret in love, and the third Act is about regret in life - what almost happened, what might have been, the road not taken.

There are endless possibilities within regret.

It’s something that my mother seemed very locked into, and for better or worse I inherited that. My kids often say to me, ‘mum, we don’t do regret’ and they’re telling me something; they’re telling me that they’re differentiating themselves from me.