In her expansive photography career, Catherine Opie has captured scenes of LGBTQ+ identity and American life. That includes intimate portraits of queer subjects, shots of solitude through ice houses in Minnesota, and pastorals of football fields in Texas.
Opie’s latest exhibition, “harmony is fraught,” will be on display at Regen Projects in Hollywood starting January 11 (and until March 3). It features over 60 of Opie’s photographs in and of Los Angeles, taken over the course of more than 30 years.
Opie was compelled to dedicate an exhibit to Los Angeles to reflect on her experience living here and being involved with queer activism in the 1990s.
“This exhibition … reflects on the city as a body, as a site of architecture, of events and things happening in relationship to the queer body and my own queer identity,” Opie says.
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“Self Portrait/Cutting,” 1993. Photo by Catherine Opie, courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul.
Opie’s LA images have gained attention previously, specifically those showing the city’s freeways, devoid of cars. Her famous photos of surfers waiting for a wave encapsulate a similar ethos: iconic moments in between the action.
“Surfer Landscape,” 2003. Photo by Catherine Opie, courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul.
She hopes the exhibition and her years of photography show the city where people and landmarks are constantly evolving.
“There's this continuity with me living here and looking at the city and thinking about it, and continuing to make work that is important in the way that we think about this very complicated city that we live in,” Opie says.
More: Photographer Catherine Opie on creating living history and leading UCLA’s art department
