Catherine Opie

Catherine Sue Opie (born 1961) is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Opie studies the connections between mainstream and infrequent society. Specializing in portrait, studio, and landscape photography, she creates pieces relating to sexual identity. Through photography, Opie documents the relationship between the individual and the space inhabited.

She is known for her portraits exploring the Los Angeles leather dyke community. Her work is held at the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and she has won awards including the United States Artists Fellowship (2006) and the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2009).

Life Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio. and was influenced heavily by photographer Lewis Hine. On her 9th birthday, she received a Kodak Instamatic camera and began taking photographs of her family and community. One of her first photographs was a self-portrait of herself flexing. Her family moved from Ohio to California in 1975. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985.

She later received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1988. Opie's thesis project, entitled Master Plan (1988), examined how the way landscapes were being used in California disturbed her. The project looked into construction sites, advertisement schemes, homeowner regulations, and the interior layout of homes within the community of Valencia, California.

In 1989, Opie moved to Los Angeles, California, and began working as an artist. She supported herself with a job as a laboratory technician at the University of California, Irvine. Opie and her former partner, painter Julie Burleigh, constructed working studios in the backyard of their home in West Adams, Los Angeles.

In 2001, Opie gave birth to a boy named Oliver through artificial insemination. Along with fellow artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, and Edward Ruscha, Opie served as a member of the board for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2012, they all resigned; however, they joined the museum's 14-member search committee for a new director after Jeffrey Deitch's resignation in 2013. Opie returned to the board in support of the museum's new director, Philippe Vergne, in 2014. She was also on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. As of 2026, Opie's studio is at The Brewery Art Colony.

Work Art

Opie's work is characterized by formal rigor, technical expertise, art history references, and socio-political commentary. She mixes traditional photography with unconventional subjects. She has printed photographs using Iris prints, and photogravure. Examples of art history references include the use of bright color backgrounds in portraits that reference the work of Hans Holbein the Younger Opie also depicted herself with her son in the traditional pose of Madonna and Child in Self Portrait/Nursing (2004).

Opie's earlier work relies more heavily on documentary photography as opposed to allegory, yet in both she uses powerful and personal iconography. For instance, the portrait Self Portrait/Pervert (1994) uses blood on herself to confront ideas about normality. The symbolism used in this work is a recurring statement for Opie, also seen in another work entitled Self-portrait/Cutting (1993).

Opie first became known for her series with Being and Having (1991) and Portraits (1993–1997), which portray queer communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her work is informed by her identity as an out lesbian. She is also interested in how identities are shaped by our surrounding architecture.

Her project American Cities (1997–2006) is a collection of panoramic black-and-white photographs of American cities. This series is similar to an earlier work of hers, Domestic (1995–1998), which documented her 2-month RV road trip, portraying lesbian families engaging in everyday household activities across the country. The resultant images were published as 700 Nimes Road. Collector Daily noted the "relentless femininity of Taylor's taste" in the images contrasted with Opie's self-declared "identity as a butch woman" in Opie's foreword to 700 Nimes Road, and Opie's "status as an ordinary mortal" in comparison to Taylor's stardom.

Opie's first film, The Modernist (2017), is a tribute to French filmmaker Chris Marker's 1962 film La Jetée. Composed of 800 still images, the film features Pig Pen (aka Stosh Fila)—a genderqueer performance artist—as the protagonist. The Modernist has been described as an ode to Los Angeles that also questions the legacy of modernism in America. The twenty-two-minute film is about a performance artist who wants his own home and has fallen in love with the architecture of Los Angeles. Unable to purchase a place to live, the artist starts burning down the architecture of LA. She has also taught photography workshops at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Fine Arts Work Center.

Publications

Freeways. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Catherine Opie, essays by Kate Bush, Joshua Decter & Russell Ferguson. The Photographers' Gallery, London. Catherine Opie: In Between Here and There. Saint Louis, MO: Saint Louis Art Museum, 2000. With an essay by Rochelle Steiner. Exhibition catalogue. Catherine Opie. The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2000. Catherine Opie: Skyways and Ice Houses. Walker Art Center 2002. 1999 / In and Around Home. The Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT, and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA, 2006. Chicago (American Cities), curated by Elizabeth T.A. Smith, published by Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2006. Catherine Opie: An American Photographer. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 2008. "Catherine Opie" This is Not to be Looked At. Morse, Rebecca. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 2008. Catherine Opie: Empty and Full, Molesworth, Helen, ed. Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart, 2011. 700 Nimes Road, Catherine Opie, with essays by Hilton Als, Ingrid Sischy, Prestel, Munich, 2015. Catherine Opie: Keeping an Eye on the World. Buchhandlung Walter König, König, 2017. Catherine Opie, with essays by Hilton Als, Douglas Fogle, Helen Molesworth, Elizabeth A.T. Smith, interview by Charlotte Cotton, Phaidon Press, New York, 2021.

Selected museum works

Master Plan (Floor Series) (1986-1988), Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California Burnt House from Burlington and Ninth Street (1990), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Being and Having (1991), Museum of Modern Art, New York Angela Scheirl (1993), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Museum of Modern Art, New York Dyke (1993), Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York; and Whitney Museum, New York Jo (1993), Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington, D.C.; Mike and Sky (1993), Museum of Modern Art, New York; Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington, D.C.; and Whitney Museum, New York Pig Pen (1993), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; and Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut Self Portrait/Cutting (1993), Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum, New York Untitled #1, from the series Freeway (1993-1994), Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York Untitled #5, from the series Freeway (1993-1994), J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut Untitled #16, from the series Freeway (1993-1994), Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada Untitled #20, from the series Freeway (1993-1994), Whitney Museum, New York Untitled #27, from the series Freeway (1993-1994), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Crystal Mason (1994), Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands; and Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington, D.C. Ron Athey (1994), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Whitney Museum, New York Self Portrait/Pervert (1994), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Trash (1994), Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis Vaginal Davis (1994), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Flipper, Tanya, Chloe, & Harriet, San Francisco, California (1995), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tate, London; and Whitney Museum, New York Dyke Deck (1996), Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut Divinity Fudge (1997), Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska Untitled #1, from the series Mini-malls (1997-1998), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Melissa & Lake, Durham, North Carolina (1998), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate, London Tammy Rae & Kaia, Durham, North Carolina (1998), Saint Louis Art Museum; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Freedom, Oklahoma (1999), Victoria and Albert Museum, London Untitled, Divinity (2000), Seattle Art Museum Untitled #1, from the series Wall Street (2000-2001), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Untitled #11, from the series Wall Street (2000-2001), Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida; and Tate, London Untitled #9, from the series Icehouses (2001), Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Untitled #10, from the series Icehouses (2001), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer (Lake Michigan) (2004-2005), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Football Landscape #3 (Notre Dame vs. St. Thomas More, Lafayette, LA) (2007), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas Kate (Bike) (2007), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Saint-Gilles-du-Gard (2007), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Football Landscape #13 (Twentynine Palms vs. Big Bear, Twentynine Palms, CA) (2008), Los Angeles County Museum of Art Inauguration portfolio (2009), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Jewelry Boxes #6, from the portfolio 700 Nimes Road (2010-2011), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark Elizabeth (2013), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Thelma and Duro (2017), National Portrait Gallery, London monument/monumental (2020), The Broad, Los Angeles

Awards Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art/Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award (1997) CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts (2003) The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Larry Aldrich Award (2004) United States Artists Fellowship (2006) National Academy Museum Elected Academician (2016) Guggenheim Fellowship (2019)

In popular culture Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic".