Photographer Laurie Simmons has been spending a lot of time on YouTube lately, looking at videos of girls and women doing makeup demonstrations of how to look like a doll.
The result is in “How We See,” her new exhibit at the Jewish Museum. It features six large photographs of fashion models seated in front of a colorful curtain, their eyes closed, with realistic fake eyes painted on their eyelids.
For Simmons, the images are full of metaphors. “Seeing and not been able to be see, or seeing and not being able to be seen, and it just made me think about our new internet digital culture and how easy it is to present a completely fake and inaccurate version of yourself,” she said.
Simmons is also trying to offer a provocative take on our notion of beauty, like her daughter Lena Dunham, creator and star of the HBO series “Girls.” She said Dunham’s work has pushed her further. “She has a really powerful voice and she has great strength in terms of standing up to criticism, she actually make me feel braver in terms of where I reach and where I will go, so that’s kind of a big surprise,” she said.
“How We See” is Simmon’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City and it derives from a long-term interest in self-perception. After she moved to New York City in 1973, she started taking pictures of scenes she created in doll houses. In the late '80s, she photographed objects on legs in a series called "Walking & Lying Objects." In 2009, she started documenting the days of a life-sized, Japanese doll.
Deborah Solomon, WNYC’s art critic, said the pictures in “How We See” come with a lot of ideas. “It offers, I think, a very rich meditation on female presentation and the portrayal of the self. What do we do with makeup? Do we use it to enhance ourselves or to utterly bury ourselves?” she said.
“How We See” is on view until Aug. 9.