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.
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 Institute and an MFA from the Cali...
Silver Gelatin
30 Minutes After Inauguration
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, community, gend...
C Print
Price Upon Request
Untitled (Gabby)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Catherine Opie Untitled 1989 Signed, dated, and inscribed in pencil, verso Vintage gelatin silver print 7 x 7 inches, image Contact gallery for price.
Silver Gelatin
$1,674
H 24 in W 20 in
Jane March (Limited Edition of 25) - 20x24 In. - Celebrity Photography
Located in New York, NY
This fine art print features actress and model Jane March, posed topless on the rooftop of the Hotel Le Bristol in Paris in 1992. This risqué iconic b...
Silver Gelatin
Eight Female Nude Compositions
Located in Astoria, NY
Ka Kwong Hui (Chinese/American, 1922-2003), Eight Female Nude Compositions, Silver Gelatin Prints, apparently unsigned, unframed. Each 8" H x 10" W. Provenance: Eva Bouzard-Hui artis...
Silver Gelatin
Bottoms Up
By Karin Rosenthal
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Coming from an earlier interest in portraits and street photography, my Nudes in Water are less about eroticism and more about body as the human vessel for our multi-faceted but brie...
Silver Gelatin
Marilyn Monroe in Something's Got to Give - 4
By Lawrence Schiller
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Lawrence Schiller, American (1936 - ) Title: Marilyn Monroe in Something's Got to Give - 4 Year: 1962 (printed 2007) Medium: Gelatin Silver Print, Signed in ink Edition: AP 3...
Silver Gelatin
Ayako, Study 2, Japan
By Michael Kenna
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Ten years ago, after a particularly tumultuous period in his life, Michael Kenna quietly made a decision to expand his photographic practice to include the human form. Kenna is well known for his minimalistic landscapes, and has been vocal in the past about the absence of the human figure in his photographs stating, "I feel they gave away the scale and became the main focus of the viewer’s attention." But, believing "fixed dogma is not a creative tool...
Silver Gelatin
$4,186
H 40 in W 30 in
Jane March (Limited Edition of 25) - 30"x40" Celebrity Photography
Located in New York, NY
This fine art print features actress and model Jane March, posed topless on the rooftop of the Hotel Le Bristol in Paris in 1992. This risqué iconic b...
Silver Gelatin
Frog Princess I
By Karin Rosenthal
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Coming from an earlier interest in portraits and street photography, my Nudes in Water are less about eroticism and more about body as the human vessel for our multi-faceted but brie...
Silver Gelatin
Love Knot
By Karin Rosenthal
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Coming from an earlier interest in portraits and street photography, my Nudes in Water are less about eroticism and more about body as the human vessel for our multi-faceted but brie...
Silver Gelatin
Untitled (firemen and chair)
By Lee Friedlander
Located in Denton, TX
Jim Dine and Lee Friedlander From the Portfolio: Photographs and Etchings Lee Friedlander & Jim Dine, published by Petersberg Press 1969 Signed and numbered (Edition of 20/75) Paper ...
Silver Gelatin
$3,600Sale Price|20% Off
H 42 in W 16.5 in
"Four Hands and a Baseball Bat" by John Baldessari (Monochrome, Sports, Photo)
By John Baldessari
Located in New York, NY
This is a black and white archival inkjet print on Canson Infinity paper. Hand signed and numbered by the artist, John Baldessari. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Lincoln Cent...
Archival Pigment
NO. 7
By Melissa Mizrakli
Located in New York, NY
The photographs of the young Turkish artist Melissa Mizrakli focus on the human body, giving it a personal interpretation. In some of her black and white works she uses the human body only as a pictorial sign in order to create almost abstract works. First made anonymous, the female model is then cloned and circularly multiplied. The result is a kind of wheel in which the repeated human body gives birth to a new, seemingly vegetal or mineral structure. Thus, the human element seems to be transformed into different other natural species...
Photographic Paper, Plexiglass, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment
Squiggle Nude
By Karin Rosenthal
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Coming from an earlier interest in portraits and street photography, my Nudes in Water are less about eroticism and more about body as the human vessel ...
Silver Gelatin
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...
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.
Archival 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...
Silver Gelatin
Pig Pen
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Pig Pen 1993/2021 Signed and numbered, verso Archival pigment print (Edition of 5 + 3 APs) 12.25 x 9 inches (31.1 x 22.9 cm), image Contact gallery for price. This work is offer...
Archival Pigment
Mx. Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki DuRane)
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Mx. Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki DuRane) 1993/2008 Signed and numbered, verso Archival pigment print (Edition of 100) 10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.3 cm), image Contact gallery for price.
Archival Pigment
From Here to There
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
From Here to There 2009 Signed in black ink, verso Archival pigment print 6 x 6 inches (15.24 x 15.24 cm), sheet 5.5 x 5.5 inches (14 x 14 cm), image This work is offered by Clam...
Archival Pigment
Trash
By Catherine Opie
Located in New York, NY
Chromogenic print Signed on label, verso Accompanied by a letter from the artist explaining the background of the photograph. 70 x 30 inches, image This artwork is offered by Clam...
C Print
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 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...
Silver Gelatin