File:Laurie Simmons Jimmy the Camera 1987.jpg

Photographic image by Laurie Simmons, Walking Camera (Jimmy the Camera) (1987). The image illustrates a key body of work by artist Laurie Simmons beginning in the late 1980s when she produced a series of human-scaled photographs of human-object hybrids created by outfitting people or dolls with various symbolic props, titled "Walking & Lying Objects" (1987–91). The tongue-in-cheek images suggested possessions that took on agency and women merging into cultural stereotypes. This work and body of work has been publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, presented a major venues, and discussed in major art journals and daily press publications.

Artist Laurie Simmons. Copyright held by the artist.

Laurie Simmons

Entire artwork

Yes

The image has contextual significance in that it serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key body of work in Laurie Simmons's career in the late 1980s: her large-scale photographic series of human-object hybrids created by outfitting dolls with miniature, highly symbolic props (handbags, houses, perfume bottles, guns, pastries) or people with oversize props. She created them when she emerged as a key figure of The Pictures Generation, introducing new approaches to photography such as staged setups, narrative, and appropriations of pop culture and everyday objects. Inspired by old dancing cigarette box commercials and Rockettes-like chorus lines, they commented on consumer culture and the objectification of the female body. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's ability to understand this distinct body of work in her practice, which brought Simmons wider recognition through public exhibitions and coverage by major critics and publications. Simmons's work of this type and this work itself is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Laurie Simmons, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.