Catherine Opie: Capturing a Fractured American Identity

We talk to Los Angeles-based artist Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Sandusky) about works she is showing with Regen Projects at Frieze Los Angeles 2022.

Opie is known for her powerfully dynamic photography that examines the ideals and norms surrounding the culturally constructed American dream and American identity. She first gained recognition in the 1990s for her series of portraits, in which she photographed gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals drawn from her circle of friends and artists.

Opie has traveled extensively across the country exploring the diversity of America’s communities and landscapes, documenting quintessential American subjects—high school football players and the 2008 presidential inauguration—while also continuing to display America’s subcultures through formal portraits. Using dramatic staging, Opie presents cross-dressers, same-sex couples, and tattooed, scarred, and pierced bodies in intimate photographs that evoke traditional Renaissance portraiture—images of power and respect. In her portraits and landscapes, Opie establishes a level of ambiguity of both identity and place by exaggerating masculine or feminine characteristics, or by exaggerating distance, cropping, or blurring her landscapes.

Opie received a B.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, and an M.F.A. from CalArts in 1988. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2006); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2002). See Opie’s work at Regen Projects (booth C3) at Frieze Los Angeles until February 17; and explore her works online at Frieze Viewing Room.

Artworks featured (© Catherine Opie, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles):

Catherine Opie

Breonna Taylor Memorial, Louisville, Kentucky Family Portrait, Robert E. Lee Monument, Richmond, Virginia

2020

Pigment print

Framed Dimensions:

51 x 40 x 2 inches (129.5 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm) Image Dimensions, each:

20 x 30 inches (50.8 x 76.2 cm

Catherine Opie

Untitled #1 (Inauguration Portrait)

2009

c-print

Framed Dimensions:

16 5/8 x 24 5/8 inches (42.2 x 62.5 cm) Image Dimensions:

16 x 24 inches (40.6 x 61 cm)

Catherine Opie

Untitled #11

2013

Pigment Print

Framed Dimensions:

43 3/4 x 62 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches (111.1 x 158.8 x 5.7 cm)

Image Dimensions:

40 x 60 inches (101.6 x 152.4 cm)

Catherine Opie

Untitled #5 (Inauguration Portrait)

2009

c-print

Framed Dimensions:

16 5/8 x 24 5/8 inches (42.2 x 62.5 cm) Image Dimensions:

16 x 24 inches (40.6 x 61 cm)

Catherine Opie

Untitled #6 (Inauguration Portrait)

2009

C-print

Framed Dimensions:

16 1/2 x 24 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches (41.9 x 62.2 x 4.4 cm)

Image Dimensions:

16 x 24 inches (40.6 x 61 cm)