Catherine Opie

Mike and Sky 1993 101

 Like many of Opie’s works, Mike and Sky presents female masculinity to defy a binary understanding of gender. The very practice of being photographed raises many complex issues around gender performance and the relationships...

Alistair Fate 1994 101

 

 

 

Untitled #16 and Untitled #17 - Freeway Series 1994 101

Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture. The Freeway Series was developed in 1995, right after the artist’s inclusion in that year’s Whitney Biennial. As if...

Untitled #16 and Untitled #17 - Freeway Series 1994 101

Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture. The Freeway Series was developed in 1995, right after the artist’s inclusion in that year’s Whitney Biennial. As if...

Since the 1990s, Catherine Opie has been recognized for her use of documentary photography to address issues of community and queerness, and the ways in which identity is shaped by architecture. Particularly resonant during the Culture Wars of the 1980s and early 1990s—a time in which the religious right tried to impose itself as a political force and cultural censor—Opie’s photographs privilege the representation of specific communities, whether the LGBT, teenagers, surfers, football players, or her group of friends who engage in sexual role playing, tattooing, and piercing.