STAGES

Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie (b. 1961) is best known for her “Portraits” series documenting queer subcultures in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the early 1990s, as well as for her evocative and graphic self-portraits.

In Self-Portrait/Cutting, the artist’s back bears a razor-etched, childlike stick drawing of a home and two women holding hands. In a second she sits shrouded in a leather mask with her bare chest displaying the word “pervert” cut decoratively into her skin. And in another portrait she is nursing her infant son in a contemporary Madonna and child.

Untitle (Road)

catherineopie C-print, 61cm x 81cm.
© Catherine Opie, Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, LA.

In addition to her examinations of the complexities of gender and social mores, Opie has also produced series that deal with ideas of community (surfing, football, ice fishing), urban topologies (freeways, American cities), and, in her recent show “In and Around Home,” the way that media and politics infiltrate Opie’s own Los Angeles–based lesbian family. A midcareer survey of Opie’s work titled “Catherine Opie: American Photographer” was held at the Guggenheim Museum in 2008.

Her work for STAGES pays profound tribute to both the LIVESTRONG agenda and Lance’s endless pursuit of the open road. She is a professor of photography at UCLA and is represented by Regen Projects in Los Angeles.