Mulheron VCU Senior Portfolio 09-10: 2/14/10: Artist #4: Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie, Chicken 1991

I have been intrigued by and have looked endlessly for the image above. I just stumbled upon it today and am very happy. I couldn't think of how to search for it without knowing the artist's name. I have always been so intrigued by this image, it makes me question and wonder about gender and identity.

Catherine Opie was born in 1961 and is primarily a documentary photographer based here in the US. She mainly focuses on aspects of community, including the LGBT community. Recently she has been photographing high school football players. "She's also interested in how identities are shaped by our surrounding architecture" (Wikipedia). She currently teaches photo at UCLA.

She has two huge bodies of work separated into Portraits and Landscapes. They are so different!

The image above, Chicken, is from her series "Being and Having". All of the images are very intimate and close to the face. Presented in a wooden frame, they all have name plates with their pseudonyms etched in cursive (Chicken, Con, Ingin, Papa Bear..etc). She is making a conversation and challenging the idea of gender identification and questioning how it could be stable or natural. “If I had taken portraits of my friends in the streets or at the clubs where they go-go dance with mustaches and jockstraps on, then [the work] would focus on the notion of peer performance. When you isolate the face and put a nametag on the frame, you emphasize the question of identity" (Opie, Guggenheim). Her goal with the series was “expanding lesbian identity and showing how lesbian sexuality is heterogeneous and complex”. The women represented didn't necessarily identify as men or anything in particular but challenged how lesbians can be depicted and that outer appearance is an individual choice.

She is represented by Regen Projects and also had a huge show at the Guggenheim Museum, titled "Cathering Opie: American Photographer". The work shown at the Guggenheim overviewed her work as a whole bringing together nearly 200 of the artist's photographs in a major mid-career survey. Her work is very stimulating and eye-catching as well as political.