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Catherine Opie Photography

American, b. 1961

American photographer Catherine Opie has not only documented the cultural shift of the last few decades, she has also lived it. Once an outsider shooting her own “fringe community,” Opie is celebrated today for her evocative black and white and color photography and her confrontational examination of gender conventions. Through her lens, she investigates themes of individual identity and community.

Opie was born in Ohio in 1961 and spent her childhood in the Midwest. When she was 13, her family moved to California, where she set up a darkroom in the spare bedroom of the new house and started taking photographs. She received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, followed by an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1988.

Opie started gaining recognition in the 1990s for her intimate studio portraits featuring other lesbian, gay and transgender artists and personal friends. Harkening back to traditional Renaissance-style portrait paintings, the photographs helped increase the visibility of marginalized communities as the fight for LGBTQ rights took shape

Opie has embraced a range of additional subject matter. She traveled across the United States to photograph widely varying but quintessentially American groups, from high school football players to members of a staunchly conservative political movement. She documented ice-fishing sheds in Minnesota, the 2008 US presidential inauguration, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and anything and everything that caught her interest. For 2015’s 700 Nimes Road (DelMonico Books/Prestel), Opie trained her eclectic lens on the house and personal belongings of Elizabeth Taylor

Opie has been teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles, since 2001 and has garnered numerous prestigious awards for her work, including the Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, the Guggenheim’s “Catherine Opie: American Photographer” exhibition spanned four floors and attracted thousands of people every day until it closed. 

Despite her recognition and accolades, Opie continues to prefer subversive imagery. "Photographs are different these days," she told Introspective magazine in 2020. "The ones I like best are from those people who are bearing witness, like images of the protestors."

On 1stDibs, find original Catherine Opie photography and prints.

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Artist: Catherine Opie
Untitled #8 (Windows)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
In this series Opie turns her lens towards the history and architecture of Vatican City. By examining the power systems and architectural structures that exist within the Vatican, the artist engages with both the legacy and present identity of this city within a city, raising critical questions about the history of the Roman Catholic Church and Catholicism and its impact today. In Walls, Windows, and Blood Opie carefully examines the politics of place as it relates to identity, advancing ideas explored in many of her recent bodies of work including The Modernist (2017), Rhetorical Landscapes (2019), and 2020. In each of these series Opie seeks to map the complexities of our contemporary moment, especially with respect to the relationship between identity and structures of power, both physical and social. The images in Walls, Windows, and Blood were taken over the course of six weeks during the summer of 2021, while Opie was the Robert Mapplethorpe Resident in Photography at the American Academy in Rome. Due to pandemic access restrictions, the Vatican was uncharacteristically empty, allowing the artist to document both Vatican City and the Vatican Museum with an extraordinary amount of freedom. Taken from inside, the Windows alternatively depict glimpses of the Vatican’s interior lawns and architecture and look out over the wider Roman capital...
Category

2010s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

Pigment

Alaska Landscape #3
By Catherine Opie
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Catherine Opie (b. 1961) is a renowned American photographer best known for her bold portraits, mysterious landscapes, and thought-provoking explorations of identity, gender, and soc...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

Still from the Modernist
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
This photograph by Catherine Opie was produced in an edition of 70 in 2022, and is offered by CLAMP in New York City.
Category

2010s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Los Angeles Women’s March
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Catherine Opie is known for her powerfully dynamic photography that examines the ideals and norms surrounding the culturally constructed American dream and American identity. In "L...
Category

2010s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Pigment

Curators, Catherine Opie Signed Vintage Photograph
By Catherine Opie
Located in Surfside, FL
CATHERINE OPIE (b. 1961, OH), SIGNED Vintage limited edition Photograph Born in Sandusky, OH, Catherine Opie received a BFA from San Francisco Art Inst...
Category

20th Century Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Untitled #3 (Norway Mountain)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
"I have been going to Norway for more than 10 years, and I really like it there. I’m obsessed with winter in Norway, and I’m obsessed with the colour blue. There is this hour and a h...
Category

2010s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

Pigment

Untitled #10 (1999)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Edition of 5. 16 x 20 inches (image); 22 x 26 inches (framed) Catherine Opie’s series '1999' documents her second epic road trip to capture America leading up to the new Millenium; ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

Untitled #19 (1999)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Edition of 5. 16 x 20 inches (image); 22 x 26 inches (framed) Catherine Opie’s series '1999' documents her second epic road trip to capture America leading up to the new Millenium; ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

Still Life #1, San Francisco, California
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Edition of 5. 30 x 40 inches (image); 30.75 x 40.75 inches (framed) 'Still Life #1, San Francisco, California' is an intimate still life featuring everyday objects and ingredients c...
Category

1990s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

Untitled #2 (1999)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Edition of 5. 16 x 20 inches (image); 22 x 26 inches (framed) Catherine Opie’s series '1999' documents her second epic road trip to capture America leading up to the new Millenium; ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

Untitled #3 (1999)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Edition of 5. 16 x 20 inches (image); 22 x 26 inches (framed) Catherine Opie’s series '1999' documents her second epic road trip to capture America leading up to the new Millenium; ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

Untitled #9 (1999)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Edition of 5. 16 x 20 inches (image); 22 x 26 inches (framed) Catherine Opie’s series '1999' documents her second epic road trip to capture America leading up to the new Millenium; ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Catherine Opie Photography

Materials

C Print

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Pig Pen
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Mx. Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki DuRane)
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From Here to There
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Curators, Catherine Opie Signed Vintage Photograph
By Catherine Opie
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CATHERINE OPIE (b. 1961, OH), SIGNED Vintage limited edition Photograph Born in Sandusky, OH, Catherine Opie received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Opie's work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan: The Walker Art Center, Minneopolis, MN; St. Louis Art Museum, MO; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Photographers' Gallery, London, UK; Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK; Studio Guenzani, Milan, Italy; and Ginza Art Space, Tokyo, Japan. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA. Catherine Opie has become known for her photographic portraits of gay communities and American urban landscapes ranging from large color images of Beverly Hills and Bel Air homes to small jewel-like silver gelatin prints of the Los Angeles freeways. Moving from the territory of the body to the structure of the city and its surrounding landscape, Opie is engaged in what curator and writer, Joshua Decter describes as "cultural portraiture". Her subject matters vary from the Minneapolis/St. Paul vernacular landscape of skyways, to large-format images of ice-fishing houses and portraits of a clan of surfers who await the perfect wave. As such, Opie has become one of the nation's most important photographers today documenting the American scene through regional landscapes and cultural portraiture. Since the prominent debut of her classically composed but often shocking images capturing Los Angeles's gay subculture, Opie has continued to explore the rich terrain of cultural portraiture and the documentary tradition in America. In its compelling clarity and inherent variation, her work reveals a deeply personal commitment to the dignity of her subjects. SELECT RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 2016 'Catherine Opie: Portraits', Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (1/30 - 5/22) 'Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road', MoCA Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, CA (1/23 - 5/8) 'Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road', Lehmann Maupin, New York NY (1/14 - 2/27) 'Catherine Opie: Portraits and Landscapes', Lehmann Maupin, New York NY (1/14 - 2/27) 2015 'Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim' (group exhibition), Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY 'Catherine Opie: Portraits and Landscapes', Wexner Center for the Arts, Minneapolis, MN 2013 'Catherine Opie', Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA 2014 'The Gang: Photographs by Catherine Opie', Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK 2012 'The Importance of Being Photographed' (group exhibition), University of South Florida (USF) Contemporary Art Museum Institute for Research in Art (IRA), Tampa, FL 'Catherine Opie: High School Football', Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, NY 'Catherine Opie Photographs Cliff May...
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Catherine Opie photography for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Catherine Opie photography available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of photography to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of blue and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Catherine Opie in pigment print, archival paper, archival pigment print and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 21st century and contemporary and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Catherine Opie photography, so small editions measuring 10 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Christophe von Hohenberg, George Dureau, and George Krause. Catherine Opie photography prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $938 and tops out at $40,000, while the average work can sell for $5,000.

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