Web Work 7

Part A:

Laurie Simmons

Laurie Simmons was born in Long Island, New York in 1949. She was educated at the Tyler School of Art and received her BFA there in 1971. Since the 1970s, Simmons has worked as a photographer, photographing scenes of dolls, ventriloquist dummies, objects on legs, and people. Her work is well-known for its psychological meaning. Simmon’s first professional images were taken in 1976. They consisted of black and white images taken in a dollhouse, primarily the bathroom and kitchen. Simmons experimented with a doll inside the kitchen, photographing it in all sorts of positions. Simmons moved onto color pictures in 1978. These color pictures, taken in the same dollhouse, were compiled to create the “Early Color Interiors” series. In 1979, Simmons showed this series at the Artists Space gallery and in 1980, at the Metro Pictures Gallery. Here next series consisted of Japanese dolls known as Teenettes photographed in front of projected images of decorated rooms, with the dolls matching the rooms’ color themes. This series became titled “Color-Cooridinated Interiors.” She then used those same dolls again in 1984 in a series called “Tourism.” This series showed the dolls touring various famous places around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal. As with the previous series, she used dolls and scenes whose colors matched. She has continued making series of photographs, focusing primarily on legs, clothes and styles, and interior decorating, including: “Walking and Lying Objects” (late 1980s), “Jimmy the Camera” (1987), “Clothes Make the Man” (early 1990s), and “Cafe of the Inner Mind.”

Here is a a link to Laurie Simmons projects.

Part B:

Here is a photograph by Jerry Uelsmann. This is a great example of manipulation in the dark room. Uelsmann doesn't use any digital manipulation, he does it all in the dark room. This picture is actually a conglomeration of three photographs: the sky, the room, and the man walking on the book. Here is an article discussing Jerry Uelsmann.