Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Sandusky, OH; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is an artist working with photography, film, ceramics and collage.

Opie’s photographs include series of portraits and American urban landscapes, ranging in format from large-scale color works to smaller black and white prints. Moving from the territory of the body to the framework of the city, Opie’s various photographic series are linked together by a conceptual framework of cultural portraiture.

Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, and abroad. Selected solo exhibitions include the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; St. Louis Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; The Long Beach Museum of Art; The Portland Art Museum; Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York; Art Pace, San Antonio; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong; Stephen Friedman, London; Barbara Gladstone, New York; Galeria Massimo De Carlo, Milan; Foncke Galerie, Ghent; Thomas Dane Gallery, London; Peter Lund, Oslo; and Ginza Art Space, Tokyo.

In September of 2008, the Guggenheim Museum in New York opened a mid-career exhibition titled, Catherine Opie: American Photographer. Recent projects include a permanent photographic installation for the new Los Angeles Federal Courthouse in 2016, and 700 Nimes Road, a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, published by Prestel in 2015. A large survey of Opie’s work opened at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway in 2017, with an accompanying catalog. She debuted her first film, The Modernist, at Regen Projects, Los Angeles in 2018, followed by a New York premier at Lehmann Maupin.

Work by the artist is included in numerous public collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Modern Art Museum Fort Worth; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, London; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Saint Louis Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Opie was a recipient of The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Medal in 2016; The Julius Shulman Excellence in Photography award in 2013; The Women’s Caucus for Art: President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement, a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006; the Larry Aldrich Award in 2004; the Calarts Alpert Award in the Arts in 2003; and the Citibank Private Bank Emerging Artist Award in 1997. She has been honored at numerous galas around the country, including LACMA’s Art + Film, REDCAT, The Hammer Museum and The Aperture Foundation.

Opie received a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1988. She also received an honorary doctorate from the California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Profile photograph by Heather Rasmussen, courtesy of the Artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles