Picture Perfect: Laurie Simmons, Photographs 1976-1978 on view March 19 – May 23, 2010

New York photographer Laurie Simmons, known for her ability to craft an image both familiar and uncanny, is the focus of a new exhibition opening March 19 at The New York Public Library. Picture Perfect: Laurie Simmons, Photographs 1976-1978  is on view March 19 through May 23, 2010 in the Print Gallery (3rd floor) of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Admission is free.

Laurie Simmons has explored the theme of the figure in domestic space for more than thirty years, beginning with this series of fifty-six black-and-white photographs from the late 1970s. Initially collecting props and miniatures with the goal of being a commercial photographer of children’s toys, Simmons soon realized she could use these small items to dramatize and investigate both ordinary truths and dark secrets beneath the picture-perfect veneer of domestic life. The resulting staged photographs are playful, funny, sinister, and touching. A tiny pair of plastic heels exquisitely framed by shadows; a doll seemingly lost in reverie at the kitchen table; and another sitting rigid in a dining chair – all of these images expose the ways in which the media shape our collective memory.

Simmons first treated this material as a cohesive project in a brief artist’s book titled In and Around the House in 1983. Twenty years later, in 2003, she expanded the series in a revised edition of that book to include the selection displayed here. Of the original ten sets of fifty-six vintage gelatin silver prints, only four have remained intact. The New York Public Library’s Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, which recently acquired the last of these sets, is the only U.S. collection to own the full series; another set is owned by the Goetz Collection in Munich, and two other sets are in private hands. The exhibition was organized by Stephen C. Pinson, the Library’s curator of photography.

Picture Perfect: Laurie Simmons, Photographs 1976-1978 will open during the AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers) Photography Show New York, one of the most important international photography events, celebrating its 30th edition this year. Mayor Bloomberg has declared March 14-21 "Photo Week."

This exhibition has been made possible by the continuing generosity of Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

About Laurie Simmons
Simmons was born on Long Island, New York in 1949. Since her first solo show at Artists Space in 1979, Simmons has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad. In 1997, the Baltimore Museum of Art organized a twenty-year retrospective of her work, entitled The Music of Regret, which included 150 photographs. Simmons was the recipient of the 2005 Roy Lichtenstein Residency in Visual Arts at The American Academy in Rome. The artist’s major monograph, Laurie Simmons: Walking, Talking, Lying was published by Aperture in the fall of 2005.

About The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. Its renowned research collections are located in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem; and the Science, Industry and Business Library at 34th Street and Madison Avenue. Eighty-eight branch libraries provide access to circulating collections and a wide range of other services in neighborhoods throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English for speakers of other languages. All in all The New York Public Library serves more than 17 million patrons who come through its doors annually and millions more around the globe who use its resources at www.nypl.org.

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Contact:  Jennifer Lam,  212.592.7708