LAURIE SIMMONS

Laurie Simmons is a New York–based artist. The photographs in her upcoming exhibition “Laurie Simmons: How We See” signal a shift in her work—each depicts a female figure with painted eyelids that emulate open eyes, and frames her within the banality of conventional portraiture. Accentuating the gap between the real and the presented self in the age of social media, these images will be on view at the Jewish Museum in New York from March 13 through August 9, 2015.

I’VE BEEN TRYING TO REJECT the notion of nostalgia in my work for a long time, but I feel I may’ve only gotten there recently. Reminiscence, remembrance, recollection, wistfulness, sentimentality: These don’t interest me at all any more. Longing, on the other hand, is an idea I’ve always felt a kinship with. While nostalgia alludes to a past time, longing isn’t temporally specific. It is, like regret (another favorite theme for me), the desire to know the road not taken, curiosity about a parallel life, about what might be missing, and even the future...

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