Catherine Opie American, 1961
Catherine Opie photographs people and the places through which communities take shape. Portraits of friends within queer communities sit alongside views of freeways, domestic interiors, and remote American landscapes. Moving between closely observed individuals and spaces with few or no occupants, she considers how identity is expressed in both social life and the built environment.
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Alaska Landscape #3, 2007
Born 1961, Sandusky, Ohio; lives in California.
Catherine Opie received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA degree from California Institute of the Arts.
Opie's career has been noted for her ongoing investigation of identity politics and American social phenomena. Though specializing in portraiture, Opie has worked extensively with landscape, cityscape, and architecture photography. She first gained attention in the early 1990s for her portraiture series of lesbian and transgender men and women. Her work explores individual identity and captures the social landscape of America.
Catherine Opie has exhibited throughout the United States, as well as abroad. She has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and two Biennials at the Whitney Museum of Art. In 2008–2009, the Guggenheim Museum in New York hosted a major retrospective entitled Catherine Opie: American Photographer.