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The thing I wondered about so much as a young artist, particularly when things weren't going well and I was really struggling, was, Will I know when to give up? Will I know when I've suffered enough rejection? Will I know when to get out?

Laurie Simmons

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Laurie Simmons
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: October 3
Film Director
Filmmaker
Photographer
Visual Artist
Far Rockaway
New York
Much
Artist
Wondered
Really
Young
Struggling
Things
Give
Suffered
Well
Rejection
Enough
Giving
Weren
Thing
Particularly
Going
Struggle

More quotes by Laurie Simmons

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I think I'm still, in many ways, a terribly self-conscious person. I'd probably be shooting and think, Well, how does my hair look?
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Any work that is really great hovers between terrific and terrible.
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I feel like I've finally got to this place that I really want to be. The place where, in my fantasy, the characters just get up and walk around - this interstitial place between humans and dolls. But I also feel like, where am I supposed to go from here? Because this feels like the place I've always wanted to be, for my whole life of shooting.
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I do remember at my very first opening in 1979 another artist coming up to me, and he was haranguing me, saying, Did you really intend for these things to be so dumb? You just put it there and took a picture of it. He wouldn't let it go. So that's what made me think about the dumbness aspect more.
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I think the big news there - most post-menopausal women I know are not celibate.
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I feel like an artist often turns the camera on themselves and on their own families to understand who they are.
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I think making features has got to be in the addiction category.
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I'm very interested in stopping time. And starting time. There is that aspect of time that I'm playing with, that it's elusive and unnoticed yet really in the end the most important thing.
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Oh god, success is so exhausting.
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I'm not interested in telling a story in my photographic work. I'm more interested in freezing certain moments in time.
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When you're getting ready, you finally reach a point where your clothes are right and your hair and makeup are right, and you're not comparing yourself to anyone. It's a really great moment. Then you get to the party and it's like, Oh my god, I'm wearing the wrong thing! I'm garish! or I'm underdressed!
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I always try so hard to find a male doll and shoot a male doll, and it always kind of implodes. Whenever I use men, they're so scary and so dark, and I can never find this sort of lightness or this place between doll and human that I find with female dolls.
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I've always gone for a kind of perfection. In the end, it's so much better to get the feeling of, Wow, she's so perfect, from a doll than to have to bear that from a woman in a magazine.
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People are much more willing nowadays to believe that pictures lie than [that] they can express any kind of truth.
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...Let's get to the image as quickly as possible, let's get to the message even faster, and let's find the scale to knock you over the head with the image and the message.
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I think of scientific veracity as an idea from the past - the scientists say it is so, the photo is proof. Even the authoritative power of the word actual - an actual what? An actual retouched photo, an actual collaged photo?
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Here were also moments of, you know, you have an exhibition: no sale, no reviews. It's hard not to get blue, and I think the kids were very aware of those periods. So if there's anything they've picked up, it's a kind of resiliency. That seems like a pretty good legacy.
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I remember years ago hearing a gynecologist say, Women report a great sense of calm and well-being post-menopause. This was way before I was even thinking about it, but I thought, Hmm, that might be something to look forward to. A sense of well-being!
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The thing that a lot of people may or may not know is every artist is a cinephile, whether they watch movies whether they're painting, or have films that influence them.
Laurie Simmons
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You mine your own past in order to get to know yourself.
Laurie Simmons