Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie’s photography reinvents traditional genres of studio portraiture, documentary and landscape to address contemporary questions of place and identity.  Among her wide-ranging inspirations are the court portraits of Hans Holbein and the American landscapes of the Hudson River School. She is well known for her depictions of individuals on the periphery of LGBTQ community, and for her cityscapes emptied of people and vehicles. Throughout her career, Opie has trained her outsider’s eye on groups, teams and crowds, to convey a sense of exile from within.  Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio, and now resides in Los Angeles, where she is a professor of Photography at UCLA. Her work has appeared in many major exhibitions, including a 2008 mid-career survey at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.