Catherine Opie

American Photographer

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Friday 26 September 2008 to Wednesday 07 January 2009
Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie has produced a complex body of photographic work, creating series of images that explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. From her early portraits of queer subcultures to her expansive urban landscapes, Opie has offered profound insights into the conditions in which communities form and the terms in which they are defined.

All the while she has maintained a strict formal rigor, working in lush and provocative color as well as richly toned black and white. Influenced by social documentary photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and August Sander, Opie underscores and elevates the poignant yet unsettling veracity of her subjects.

Catherine Opie: American Photographer brings together nearly 200 of the artist’s photographs in a major mid-career survey, offering the most comprehensive presentation of her work to date. Including works from the series Being and Having (1991); Portraits (1993-97); Freeways (1994-95); Houses (1995-96); Domestic (1995-98); Mini-malls (1997-98); Large-Format Polaroids (2000); Wall Street (2001); Icehouses (2001); Surfers (2003); Chicago (2004); and In and Around Home (2004-05), the exhibition will provide audiences with an unprecedented opportunity to examine the many interconnections between Opie’s diverse bodies of work.

This exhibition is supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

The Guggenheim Museum gratefully acknowledges the Leadership Committee for Catherine Opie: American Photographer.

Location

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street), New York City 10128 0173
Manhattan Precinct
New York
United States
Naked tattooed black man holds naked tattoed white man.
Ron Athey/The Sick Man (from Deliverance)
© All rights reserved Catherine Opie 2000 United States
Dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid) 110 x 41 inches (279.4 x 104.1 cm) Unique Marc and Livia Straus Family Collection © 2008 Catherine Opie. Courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles