post_modellismus – models in art - krinzinger projekte - Galerie ...

Since the photographs depict models of
reality and not reality itself, they not only
irritate the assumption of what is superficially
evident and visible but even the
prototypical prerequisites of photographic
production and reception. Or to
put it differently: These pictures of models
recall that photography itself can only
establish the model case of a possible
reality, meaning and conception.
The reality that appears in Laurie
Simmons’ photographs is a dollhouse in
a literal sense. It consists of figures and
objects the artist found in toy shops in
the country: ‘toys that I’d had as a child,
toys I’d gotten for Christmas – the same
dollhouse, the same dolls, board games,
tea sets. Not just similar – the very same
brands and boxes that I had played with.’ 3
In the mid-1970s Laurie Simmons used
these toy figures to create her first photographic
pieces. She arranged scenes
around the protagonists of female figures
whose range of action was limited
to the interiors of the kitchen, living room,
dining room and bath room. By means
of commercially available dollhouse interiors
and figures the artist created
motives and spaces of action that appear
both playful and oppressive: ‘I think a kind
of play acting was going on, setting up
these things, that was less about the
fact of playing and more about the
recreation of a sense of visual memory
or history.’ 4
This visual memory and its prototypical
manifestation creates the foundation for
Simmons’ photographs: The models for
her photographs are take from illustrated
press and TV programs, the advertisement
industry and daily soap operas
from that time. The poses of her protagonists
are those of industrially created
model figures, props and accessories
from the 1950s. The dollhouse after
which Simmons modeled her first series
of photographs corresponds, as said
above, exactly to the dollhouse of her
childhood. The arranged scenes and
habitats, however, do not just illustrate
biographic sketches but rather reveal
collective patterns and stereotypes,
which were influential for the middleclass
society of the 1950s and early
1960s in the United States: ‘It’s a generalized
memory’, as the artist said, ‘it’s of a
particular generation, and a particular way
of growing up in a homogenized environment.’
5 That Laurie Simmons deliberately
works with the possibilities of photographic
representation has to do with
the powerful authority of the reproductive
media, which have sought to implement
certain models of reality not just
aesthetically but also socially and politically.
Here Simmons is aiming at nothing
less than a politics of representation.
Assuming that the photographic image
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