In and Around the House

A seminal book by one of the first artists of the Pictures generation to use set-up photography to create images with intensely psychological subtexts. it features the first comprehensive survey of Simmons' early black-and-white photographs, the importance of which Carol Squiers describes in her essay: "What Simmons did with domestic subjects was unique... Her use and manipulation of miniaturized dolls, objects, and interiors gave the photographs the abstracted quality of a dream, which was markedly different from the cool... images of other artists. By using objects that so clearly evoked childhood, she was also more directly referencing personal memory." This previously unpublished early work put Laurie Simmons on the forefront of a new generation of artists, predominantly women, whose use of the media as subject began a new dialogue on contemporary art. In Simmons' own words, "Re-examining the pictures, I became aware of a potential narrative and structure that hadn't been obvious to me during the years that I was shooting. I actually began to see a house with many rooms, as well as indoor and outdoor space. I also began to think about a female presence, both real and implied, and to formally locate a space that didn't exist in my mind originally when I was exploring the territory with my camera. The project that you see here took shape when hundreds of long-forgotten images were revisited with the notion of creating a home within In and Around the House." -- back cover inset