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Laurie Simmons in "Romance"
Early in her career, Laurie Simmons used photography as a tool to create a still and pristine reality. Simmons explains how she was able to bring her still photographs to life in her first feature film, The Music of Regret (2006).
Drawing from the American Songbook tradition, Simmons composed lyrics and storylines for the musical, which featured a cast of puppets, dummies, and dancers. “My inner life about my own work was very theatrical and very narrative, but that’s something I was always afraid to express,” says Simmons.
Viewers follow Simmons through portions of the three-act musical, which portrays complex emotions of love, loss, and regret.
More information and creditsCredits
Created by: Susan Sollins & Susan Dowling. Executive Producer & Curator: Susan Sollins. Series Producer: Eve-Laure Moros Ortega. Associate Producer: Migs Wright. Associate Curator: Wesley Miller. Production Manager: Alice Bertoni & Nick Ravich. Production Coordinator: Amanda Donnan & Meredith Klein. Consulting Director: Catherine Tatge. Editor: Mark Sutton. Director of Photography: Martial Barrault, Terry Doe, Bob Elfstrom, Mead Hunt, & Joel Shapiro. Additional Photography: Bernd Meiners. Sound: Tom Bergin, Ray Day, Ron Garson, Judy Karp, Gilles Metivier, Roger Phenix, & Merce Williams. Assistant Camera: Craig Feldman, Brian Hwang, Cyril Mulon, & Michael Pruitt-Bruun. Field Producer: Charles Atlas. Production Assistant: Marissa Berrong, Kam Stocks, & Daniel Swann. Additional Animation: Shawn Dunbar.
Creative Consultant: Ed Sherin. Art Direction & Design: Open, New York. On-Line Editor: Don Wyllie. Composer: Peter Foley. Voice-Over Artist: Jace Alexander. Sound Editing: Margaret Crimmins & Greg Smith. Sound Mix: Cory Melious & Tony Volante. Animation Stand: Frank Ferrigno. Assistant Editor: Ahmed Amer, Jennifer Chiurco, & George Panos.
Artworks Courtesy of: Pierre Huyghe; Judy Pfaff; Lari Pittman; Laurie Simmons; Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Double Wide Media; Gladstone Gallery, New York; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris; Performa 05; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Salon 94, New York; & Sperone Westwater, New York. Archival Footage Courtesy of: Judy Pfaff Studio.
Special Thanks: Lisa Albaugh; Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation; The Art21 Board of Trustees; Atle Gerhardsen, Berlin; Catherine Belloy; Tanya Brodsky; Bettina Bruning; Shawn Caley Regen; Karina Daskalov; Dog Bark Sound; Bridget Donahue; Roy Dowell; Sophie Dufour; Jeanne Englert; Don Faller; Ruth Findlay; Frame:Runner NYC; Maike Fries; Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn; Industria Studios, New York; Meredith Klein; Rose Lord; Sheila Lynch; Anna Miller; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Adam Ottavi-Schiesl; Karen Polack; Paul Power; Thomas Quigley; Andre Ribuoli; Donald Rosenfeld; Sound Lounge; Fabienne Stephan; Meryl Streep; Tate Modern, London; Rob van Erve; Dawson Weber; Chris Webster; Kori Wilson; & James Yohe.
Director of Education & Public Programs: Tana Hargest. Education Consultant: Jessica Hamlin. Manager of Public Programs & Outreach: Kelly Shindler. Web Producer: Ana Otero. Senior Development Officer: Beth Allen. Development Associate: Sara Simonson. Development Coordinator: Erin Cesta & Katherine Payne.
Interns: Stephanie Abraitis, Alex Agnant, Gabriella della Croce, Nora Herting, Milena Hoegsberg, Rives Kitchell, Katie McCurry, Simone Otenaike, Karoline Pfeiffer, Nick Pozek, Carolina Puente, Muña Qamar, Bettina Riccio Henry, Meg Scally, Karen Seapker, Peter Sebeckis, Lucy Strong, & Kelly Williamson.
Public Relations: Goodman Media International. Station Relations: De Shields Associates, Inc. Legal Counsel: Albert Gottesman. Bookkeeper: Marea Alverio-Chaveco & Valerie Riley. Travel Agent: Lita Gottesman.
Major underwriting for Season 4 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Bloomberg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Bagley Wright Fund, and W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
Through the Art21 Translation Project, multilingual audiences from around the globe can contribute translations, making Art21 films more accessible worldwide. Translate this video now.
Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.
Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as “living objects,” animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Simmons’s work blends psychological, political, and conceptual approaches to art making—transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium. Mining childhood memories and media constructions of gender roles, her photographs are charged with an eerie, dreamlike quality.
“My inner life about my own work was very theatrical and very narrative, but that’s something I was always afraid to express.”
Laurie Simmons
Artist at Work
