In Dialogue

Catherine Opie is one of the most important American photographers of our time. For more than three decades she has used her artistic practice to help us see people, places, and subcultures that are often overlooked. Opie has created seminal portraits of the LGBTQIA community, as well as images of high school football players, California surfers, protesters, and tender portraits of herself, friends, and family. She has also drawn our attention to both the natural and built environments, capturing domestic interiors, mini-malls, monuments, freeways, national parks, memorials, and swamps. In her role as a witness, Opie has equally presented back to us both the good and the bad, the losses and the gains, the constructive and the destructive.

This exhibition presents four series from 2016-2020. The Modernist, Opie’s first foray into film, is a haunting narrative composed of more than 800 black-and-white photographs that speaks to the unattainable utopian promises of modernist architecture in Los Angeles. Opie’s Political Collages rely on The Modernist’s aesthetics of magazine and newspaper clippings. These quirky animations about serious issues, including gun control and environmental catastrophe are presented on oversized monitors that reference iPhones, a primary way many of us now take in news. Her seven-part pigment print, monument/monumental, along with photographic diptychs from her 2020 series capture the socio-political landscape during an unprecedented year, shot while on a road trip from Los Angeles to the southeastern United States. Through poignant juxtapositions of images highlighting the COVID-19 pandemic, police shootings, the removal of confederate monuments, the 2020 presidential election, protests, and more, Opie captures the complexities of a nation divided.

Opie’s work is as vital as ever. As the 2024 election looms, and the personal freedoms of women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and people of color are particularly under threat, we hope this presentation inspires us to come together and reflect on our similarities rather than our differences and to collectively consider ways to foster a more inclusive and thriving society for all.

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, OH, in 1961 and earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited extensively at institutions worldwide, including MASP, São Paulo (2024), Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia (2023); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo (2017); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2016 and 2010); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2015); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2014); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2011); Portland Art Museum (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2006); Saint Louis Art Museum (2000); the Photographers’ Gallery, London (2000); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1997); among others. In 2016 she completed a monumental installation for the new Los Angeles Federal Courthouse.

Opie was an Honoree at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden New York Gala (2019) and is the recipient of numerous other honors and awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship (2019); Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal (2016); Julius Shulman Institute Excellence in Photography Award (2013); Women’s Caucus for Art President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement (2009); United States Artists Fellowship (2006); Larry Aldrich Award (2004); Washington University Freund Fellowship (1999); and the Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award (1997).

Her work is included in the permanent collections of many museums, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; among others.

Join us for a conversation between Opie and Charlotte Cotton, photography historian and curator, on Tuesday, October 15 at 5pm in Tyler-Tallman at Sloan Music Center. The talk will be followed by a reception in the Van Every/Smith Galleries at the Belk Visual Arts Center from 6-7:30pm.

*The Galleries will close with the college in mid December and reopen January 14, 2025. Appointments will be possible during that window of time.

View the exhibition guide

View the exhibition publication

Watch the artist conversation between Catherine Opie and Charlotte Cotton