This oversized black-and-white photograph of a gigantic alligator skin purse with legs is undeniably Laurie Simmons. Walking Purse, 1988, created for her seminal series Walking and Lying Objects (1987-91), is one of only two instances where the object is worn by a real person. While this was her original intent for the series, she turned to using doll and mannequin legs out of necessity for the photographs that followed. The pair of legs we see here belong to her sister Bonnie who wore this human-size purse costume.

In the case of Walking Purse, Simmons has chosen an object that is a trope of femininity, drawing our attention to the signified role of women. An alligator skin purse references not only the cost of being a woman but also the influence of advertising and consumerism. Stereotypes of a woman and her handbag also come to mind: how she never leaves the house without it and how men find mystique in what she carries inside it. Inspired by an image of a cookie or cracker box on a pair of woman’s legs that she saw while visiting the ventriloquist Doug Skinner, and an early television commercial of dancing cigarette packages, Simmons’ series of ‘woman-as-object’ – a purse, a camera, an apple, a house, a gun – questions gender roles and stereotypes in American culture.

Simmons, along with Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler and Richard Prince, among others, is part of a group of artists known as the ‘Pictures Generation’. Influenced by the theories of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and Laura Mulvey, they used appropriated imagery to reveal underlying social constructions. Simmons has exhibited internationally, including the Walker Art Centre, Whitney Biennial and Gothenburg Museum of Art. Her work is found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.