Accompanying a major survey of the American artist Laurie Simmons, this generously illustrated book features every important step of her ever-evolving career--from small black-and-white photographs of miniature furniture to large-scale, full color images featuring life-sized Japanese dolls. Gender roles and identity, reality and its distortion, and the psychologically loaded myth of "normal life" are recurrent themes in Laurie Simmons's work. Taken chronologically, her career has followed a trajectory from miniature to full size, black-and-white to color, mechanical to human. Over more than four decades, the artist's authentic gaze has remained unflinching, whether she is composing tableaux of plastic figurines and props, or painting the eyelids of glamorous models and transforming them into doll-like humans with an unsettling stare. Her well-known series, such as "Walking and Lying Objects" and "The Instant Decorator," are featured here along with lesser-known series that explore underwater photography, self-portraiture, and a feature film starring Meryl Streep and a plastic dummy. The book includes an essay on Simmons's early iconic photographs, while other writings take closer looks at specific and more recent series. Renowned art historian and curator Michael Auping's interview with Simmons rounds out this book. Copublished by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and DelMonico Books

Laurie Simmons is one of the first contemporary American photographers to create elaborately staged narrative photographs. Using dolls to act out piquant scenarios within specially constructed environments, she has slyly commented on contemporary culture while recapturing a sense of her childhood in an era she recalls as "both beautiful and lethal." Populated by housewives, ventriloquists' dummies, and familiar objects in unfamiliar guises, her diverse tableaux are often infused with bittersweet nostalgia yet charged with a disquieting sense of dislocation.

"Mommy, Barbie's bashing Ken with a rolling pin! Internationally acclaimed photographer Laurie Simmons deftly uses dolls, the archetypal little girl's toy, to launch a critique of the norms of femininity, masculinity and gender that can reduce women and men to mindless stereotypes. A slyly powerful, even subversive piece of work."

This compelling narrative goes behind the scenes with the world’s most important living artists to humanize and demystify contemporary art. The best-selling author of Seven Days in the Art World now tells the story of the artists themselves—how they move through the world, command credibility, and create iconic works. 33 Artists in 3 Acts offers unprecedented access to a dazzling range of artists, from international superstars to unheralded art teachers. Sarah Thornton's beautifully paced, fly-on-the-wall narratives include visits with Ai Weiwei before and after his imprisonment and Jeff Koons as he woos new customers in London, Frankfurt, and Abu Dhabi. Thornton meets Yayoi Kusama in her studio around the corner from the Tokyo asylum that she calls home. She snoops in Cindy Sherman’s closet, hears about Andrea Fraser’s psychotherapist, and spends quality time with Laurie Simmons, Carroll Dunham, and their daughters Lena and Grace. Through these intimate scenes, 33 Artists in 3 Acts explores what it means to be a real artist in the real world. Divided into three cinematic "acts"—politics, kinship, and craft—it investigates artists' psyches, personas, politics, and social networks. Witnessing their crises and triumphs, Thornton turns a wry, analytical eye on their different answers to the question "What is an artist?" 33 Artists in 3 Acts reveals the habits and attributes of successful artists, offering insight into the way these driven and inventive people play their game. In a time when more and more artists oversee the production of their work, rather than make it themselves, Thornton shows how an artist’s radical vision and personal confidence can create audiences for their work, and examines the elevated role that artists occupy as essential figures in our culture.

Interview by James Welling.