Catherine Opie
[Photographer, b. 1961, Sandusky, Ohio, lives in Los Angeles.]
I’ve pretty much been doing the same thing since I was nine. I was making portraits of my friends. I was making self-portraits, I was making images of the neighborhood.
...things become mainstream when they become imaged over and over again. Something happens in relationship to ideas of representation that makes it more palatable or digestible.
It’s a really hard thing to cover all your bases and still make photographs that challenge you as an artist.
I concentrate on disturbing the devices that society imposes on variant communities to keep them “ghettoized” by class, race, sexuality, and gender.
My work is always about community. But do I have to do queer work to be part of the queer community?
