Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie’s iconic body of work investigates the relationship between the individual and its surroundings whilst raising important questions about identity, sexuality and the power dynamics inherent in the discourse on gender. Opie’s photographs are powerful yet vulnerable, intimate but at the same time accessible, violent but only in their ability to tear down our preconceptions. Some of Opie’s most critically discussed works include Being and Having, a snippet into her lesbian, queer and BDSM community in Los Angeles; Domestic, the culmination of a two-month road trip across the United States documenting the life of lesbian families, and her world-acclaimed self portrait series where Opie displays her body as latex-bound, with cuts and whilst nursing. Catherine Opie continues to document the American landscape and its queer communities from Los Angeles where she also works as a professor of photography at UCLA.

By Gabriella Gasparini