This Resource Unit focuses on various aspects of Catherine Opie’s work and provides techniques for exploring both the visual arts and other areas of the curriculum, and has images that can be downloaded or projected for classroom use. The images may be used for education purposes only and are not licensed for commercial applications of any kind. Before bringing your class to the Guggenheim, we invite you to visit the exhibition, read the guide, and decide which aspects of the exhibition are most relevant to your students. For more information on scheduling a visit for your students, please call 212 423 3637.

Although some of the works in the exhibition may not be appropriate for younger students, this Resource Unit focuses on works and concepts that are integral to the curriculum and can be successfully used with students of all ages. As for all exhibitions, it is strongly recommended that educators preview the exhibition prior to student visits.

Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie has produced a complex body of photographic work, adopting such diverse genres as studio portraiture, landscape photography, and urban street photography to explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. From her early portraits of queer subcultures to her expansive urban landscapes, Opie offers insights into the conditions in which communities form and the terms by which they are defined. All the while she has maintained a strict formal rigor, working in stark and provocative color as well as richly toned black and white. Although Opie’s photographs have been shown extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, until now no single exhibition has offered an overview of her richly diverse work. Catherine Opie: American Photographer serves to fill this void, forming a major mid-career survey through significant examples from her most important series, including Portraits (1993–97); Freeways (1994); Houses (1995–96); Domestic (1995–98); American Cities (1997–present); Icehouses (2001); Surfers (2003); and In and Around Home (2004–05). As such, this exhibition provides audiences with a valuable opportunity to examine firsthand the interconnections between Opie’s various styles and subjects.

Catherine Opie: American Photographer is organized by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography; with Nat Trotman, Assistant Curator.

The entries in this Resource Unit are adapted from essays by Nat Trotman, Assistant Curator, published in the exhibition catalogue Catherine Opie: American Photographer.

This exhibition is supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

The Guggenheim Museum gratefully acknowledges the Leadership Committee for Catherine Opie: American Photographer.

“My work is really simple; I don't have a lot of hidden agendas. It's about place and identity and how they inform each other, and that includes myself; but iconic images need to be simple, powerful, and specific.”

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1961. When she was almost nine, she discovered the work of photographer Lewis Hine, who documented the plight of child laborers at the turn of the 20th century. Inspired by Hine’s photographs, she requested a camera for her ninth birthday, and was given a Kodak Instamatic by her parents. She immediately began photographing her family and neighborhood, exhibiting a fascination with community that continues to this day. Opie notes, “basically what I did then, and I still do is wander around with my camera to describe my relationship to the world and where I live.”

When she was 18 Opie moved to San Francisco to study photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduating in 1985, she enrolled in the MFA program at CalArts in Valencia. Her thesis project Master Plan examined the planned communities of Valencia, from house construction and advertisement schemes, to homeowner regulations and the homes of residents.

In 1989 Opie moved to Los Angeles and began working as an artist, supporting herself until 1994 as a lab technician at the University of California, Irvine. As her work became more well-known she accepted teaching positions and residencies at such institutions as the St. Louis Museum of Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Yale University. In 2002 she was offered a tenured position at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Opie uses her camera to examine the world around her, documenting community, decoding identity, and deciphering American culture. She has developed a contemporary approach to documentary photography and credits earlier photographers including Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and August Sander among her greatest historical influences.

Although she is best known for her striking images of individuals from specific communities or subcultures, she has also consistently photographed the natural and urban landscapes that surround her. These bodies of work represent a different but related approach to her interest in community and identity—an interest that unifies all her projects to date, whether focused on gender and sexual identities, notions of community, or her singular vision of life in the USA.