Catherine Opie

Regular Deadline Extended to January 31! Don't wait enter today! ENTER HERE Catherine Opie is one of the most preeminent artists of her generation and has made some of the most indelible images of our time. Her intimate photographic portraits of queer communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco put her on the map in the early 1990s. She also works in landscapes, both natural and urban. Her black and white photos of empty freeways and strip malls hold up a haunting mirror of contemporary America. And once you see some of her self portraits, I guarantee they will stay with you forever. Her work has been featured in hundreds of major museums, gallery exhibitions and public collections all around the world. For the first time, the body of her work has been published in a stunning new monograph published by Phaidon. It includes over 300 images as well as essays written by the likes of the New Yorkers, Hilton Als. She joins me today to talk about the evolution of her extraordinary career. Catherine Opie, welcome to Design Matters. Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you. Catherine, I understand that you still have a Garfield stuffed animal and a third place bowling trophy from the 1970s on display in your studio. Yeah. Okay. Why do you still have these objects and why on display? Well, you can see me. I have a shelf behind me of people who are on Zoom, they would be able to see a shelf behind me that had numerous books and little things. And recently my mom was cleaning out her house and were about ready to move her to another place that is for a living at ’85 in a really beautiful way. And she brought me this trunk of objects and when I opened it, it was just, I had these shelves and I thought, “Oh, well, I’ll just have this weird Garfield stuffed animal and one can’t throw out their 11th place plaque of bowling from Sandusky, Ohio.” Well, yeah. Just the only evidence of my athletic prowess I will ever have in my life. So yeah. Catherine, you were born in Sandusky, Ohio. Your mother was a gym teacher until she had children. Your dad ran his family’s art supply company. Is it true he also had one of the country’s preeminent collections of Republican political memorabilia? And I understand he gave you an embroidered commemorative ribbon made after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Is that true? He must’ve been extraordinarily proud to know that your work was hanging in the Obama White House. Well, I want to talk about the exhibit in a little bit, but I want to start first with your first experiences with photography. I understand at eight years old, while in the fourth grade you wrote a book report on the photography of Lewis Hine. Why Lewis Hine and how did you first find out about him? I understand that you went about making friends when you moved to San Diego or outside of San Diego by taking photos. And I believe this is also when you had your first crush, is that correct? You knew from a young age that you were gay, but have said that the lack of role models around you made coming out a difficult process. And you and I are the same exact age, both born in 1961. And so I didn’t come out till much, much later in life. And so I fully understand that difficulty. What was the most aspect for you? The quandary, also, I think began even before you committed to photography as a profession. At one point after you graduated high school you considered becoming a kindergarten teacher and even went to Virginia Intermont College to study early childhood education. I mean, in thinking about the pathways of a life you were on that pathway. You left San Francisco to pursue your MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. You said that that transition sucked. Even though I had Catherine Lord and Millie Wilson and amazing people around me at CalArts who celebrated that and definitely added on to my ability to understand theory and feminism and had Douglas Crimp come through the school enormous amount of people at that time p