Exclusive Episode #040: Choreographer Helen Pickett during the making of Laurie Simmons’s The Music of Regret (2006) at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio, New York.

Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as "living objects" animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult's memories, longings, and regrets. Her work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography's propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium.

Learn more about Laurie Simmons: http://www.art21.org/artists/laurie-simmons

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller, Nick Ravich & Susan Sollins. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Laurie Simmons. Thanks: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.