Catherine Opie facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Catherine Opie
Born	1961 Sandusky, Ohio, US
Education	San Francisco Art Institute, California Institute of the Arts
Known for	Portrait, landscape, and studio photography
Notable work	Being and Having (1991), Portraits (1993—1997), Domestic (1999)
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship

Catherine Sue Opie, born in 1961, is an American photographer and teacher. She lives and works in Los Angeles, where she teaches photography at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Opie uses photography to explore how people connect with their surroundings. She creates pictures that show different kinds of people and places. Her work often looks at what it means to be American. She combines artistic and documentary styles in her photos.

She is known for her portraits of various communities in Los Angeles, including people with diverse identities. Her photographs are displayed in famous museums like the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She has also won several awards for her work.

Her Life and Education

Catherine Opie grew up in Sandusky, Ohio. When she was nine, she received a Kodak Instamatic camera. She immediately started taking pictures of her family and the people around her. By age 14, she had her own darkroom, where she developed her photos.

In 1975, her family moved to California. She studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute, earning her first degree in 1985. Later, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1988. Before CalArts, she mostly took black-and-white photos. For her final project at CalArts, called Master Plan, she photographed construction sites and homes in Valencia, California.

In 1988, Opie moved to Los Angeles to work as an artist. She also worked as a lab technician at the University of California, Irvine. She and her partner, Julie Burleigh, built art studios in their backyard. In 2001, Opie had a son named Oliver.

Opie has been involved with several art museums. She served on the board of overseers for the Hammer Museum. She also served on the board for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2014, she supported the museum's new director, Philippe Vergne. She was also on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Her Art

Catherine Opie's art combines different photography styles and often refers to art history. Her work also shares social and political messages. She mixes traditional photography with unique subjects. For example, she explores abstract shapes in landscapes in her Icehouses (2001) and Surfers (2003) series.

She uses various printing methods, including special color prints and instant film. She often uses bright colored backgrounds in her portraits, similar to old paintings by artists like Hans Holbein the Younger. She also takes full-body portraits that remind people of the photographer August Sander. In one photo, Self Portrait/Nursing (2004), she poses with her son like a classic painting of a mother and child.

Opie became well-known for her series Being and Having (1991) and Portraits (1993–1997). These works show people from diverse communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Being and Having explores how people express their identity. These photos show strong ideas about identity, age, and community.

A main theme in her work is the idea of "community." Opie has photographed many different groups, including people from LGBTQ+ communities, surfers, and high school football players. She is interested in how our surroundings shape who we are. Her work often explores how the idea of family can be different for various groups of people. She shows that for some, family can be built on close friendships and community bonds.

In her Portraits series (1993–1997), she shows many different identities within the LGBTQ+ community, such as drag performers and transgender people. These portraits celebrate and protect the people and communities she photographs.

Her project American Cities (1997–present) features black-and-white panoramic photos of famous American cities. This is similar to her earlier work, Domestic (1995–1998). For Domestic, she traveled across the country in an RV, photographing families in their everyday lives.

In 2011, Opie photographed the home of actress Elizabeth Taylor in Bel Air, Los Angeles. Taylor passed away during the project, so they never met. Opie took 3,000 photos for the project, and 129 of them were published in a book called 700 Nimes Road.

Opie's first film, The Modernist (2017), is a tribute to a French filmmaker's movie from 1962. The film uses 800 still images and stars a performance artist named Pig Pen. The Modernist is about an artist who loves the architecture of Los Angeles. Since he cannot afford to buy a home, he starts burning down beautiful buildings in the city.

Teaching Career

Opie began teaching at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2001. In 2019, UCLA announced that Opie would hold a special teaching position in the art department. This position was supported by a large gift from philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick.

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

• Catherine Opie, The Photographers' Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
• Catherine Opie: American Photographer, Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 2008–2009. This show included a large book with almost 200 of Opie's works.
• Somewhere in the Middle, 2011. This is a permanent art piece at the Hillcrest Hospital Cleveland Clinic. It was made to help hospital visitors, employees, and patients during difficult times.
• Catherine Opie: Empty and Full, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2011.
• Catherine Opie: Portraits and Landscapes, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, 2015.
• Catherine Opie: 700 Nimes Road, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2016.
• Catherine Opie: The Modernist. Regen Projects, Los Angeles, 2018.
• Catherine Opie—Keeping an Eye on the World, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, October 2017 – January 2018.

Group Exhibitions

• Kiss My Genders. Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, 2019. Opie's work was shown alongside photos and videos by other artists.

Notable Works in Public Collections

Awards and Honors

Catherine Opie has received many awards for her photography, including:

• Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award (1997)
• CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts (2003)
• Larry Aldrich Award (2004)
• United States Artists Fellowship (2006)
• Women's Caucus for Art: President's Award for Lifetime Achievement (2009)
• Archives of American Art Medal (2016)
• National Academy member (2016)
• Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2019)