Production still from the "Art in the Twenty-First Century" Season 4 episode, "Romance," 2007. Segment: Laurie Simmons © Art21, Inc. 2007.
Our latest “Exclusive” has just gone live! Filmed in 2006 at Industria Studios, New York, this previously unreleased footage shows photographer Laurie Simmons as she directs scenes for her first film, “The Music of Regret,” starring Meryl Streep. A longtime friend of Simmons and married to a sculptor herself, Streep conveys the difficulties and advantages of leaving a solitary studio practice to work with dozens of crew and collaborators on a motion picture. Click here to watch the video on Art21’s website.
Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as “living objects,” animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Her work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium.
Laurie Simmons is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
Learn more about Laurie Simmons at: https://www.art21.org/artists/laurie-simmons.
CREDITS | Producer: Ian Forster, Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Mead Hunt & Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix & Merce Williams. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Laurie Simmons, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn & Donald Rosenfeld. Special Thanks: Ed Lachman, Industria Studios, New York & Catherine Tatge. Video: © 2012 Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.