Laurie Simmons: Black & White

In October, Almine Rech opens an exhibition of new and early works by Laurie Simmons at its Matignon gallery in Paris. “Laurie Simmons: Black & White” brings together new wall sculptures from her “Deep Photos” series, alongside a new video and new paintings from her “Autofiction” series. These works are presented together with silver gelatin prints from her first body of work, “Early Black and White” (1976–78). The display establishes a dialogue between Simmons’s formative early photographs and her dynamic new production in a range of mediums.

Since the mid-1970s, Simmons has staged carefully constructed scenes for the camera, producing images charged with psychological depth and non-linear narratives. By the early 1980s, she emerged as a leading figure in a new generation of predominantly female artists who used photography to expand contemporary art’s possibilities. Her practice, combining film, photography, and sculpture, explores identity, fiction, and the construction of image in ways that remain highly influential.

Her works are held in major international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Hara Museum, Tokyo; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among others. In 2018–2019, her retrospective “Big Camera/Little Camera” was presented at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beyond photography, Simmons has written and directed films: “The Music of Regret” (2006), starring Meryl Streep, and “My Art” (2017), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival.