Catherine Opie: American Photographer

About this book

This comprehensive new exhibition catalogue published to accompany the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museums major mid-career survey of Catherine Opies work is the first to gather all of the artists key projects to date in a single volume. Opie is best known for her subtle but potent portraits of people from the queer communities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In this definitive volume each of Opies series--among them Portraits Freeways Domestic Icehouses and In and Around Home--is reproduced in full color plates alongside works that were not displayed in the exhibition allowing for the most complete overview of this important Los Angeles artists work to date. In addition this volume features a lead essay by exhibition curator Jennifer Blessing which surveys Opies artistic career and its historical contexts; a series of interviews with the artist by Russell Ferguson Chair of the Department of Art at UCLA; and a brief personal reflection by internationally renowned novelist Dorothy Allison whose work explores many concerns similar to Opies. It also includes introductory essays on each of the artists series by Nat Trotman Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim as well as a newly researched exhaustive exhibition history and bibliography making it the primary source for future research on Opies work. Catherine Opie was born in Ohio in 1961 and is currently Professor of Photography at UCLA. Opies work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States Europe and Japan. She has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Walker Art Center Minneapolis; St. Louis Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles among many others.