Catherine (Cathy) Opie is a photographer whose work is internationally recognized and highly regarded by art critics, their magazines, and by her audience. Although she has a broad spectrum of foci for each of her series, she is recognized for her focus on sexual identity (in large format) as she questions societal norms in her depictions of transexuals, transvestites, as well as tattoos and scarification, thus igniting controversy. She aims to inform the viewer and is "interested in capturing the so called perverse".
I chose pieces mainly from two of Cathy Opie's series to present; ones that I believe offer a broad view of her subject matter, perspective, and interest. The photographic portraits with the vibrant backdrops are from her series "Being and Having" and evoke questions that force her audience to truly look at the individual in the frame. Her work ignites interest because it explores the issue of identity, not just sexual, in all of her subjects, from "landscapes to lesbians". By igniting questions among her audience, due to the ambiguity of her subjects' gender and role, she "seeks to learn about herself and her society. (Knot Magazine)
The other series I included in my presentation were pieces selected from Cathy's "In and Around Home" 1999 series. This set of work featured the private and public world, presenting the home through the lens of a "gay artist/ mother/ activist" (Art's Journal). Here, she uses a wide range of photographic style and subject matter, shooting landscapes, front doors, hometown windows, kitchens, and family life.
In general, Cathy Opie's work has been cited in an interview with the artist to be "a reaction to the HRC [Human Rights Campaign] led 1994 March on Washington, to the homogenization of gay culture that she felt was then underway, and to the HRC's promotion of gays as just-like-you suburbanites"(Art's Journal).
Here are some questions for reflection:
What do you see in Cathy's "Being and Having" series? Are the figures masculine or feminine? Why, what convinces you? And are her pictures beautiful?
Would you say that this series and its subject matter inform the viewer? How and what do they say?
How would you describe Cathy's "In and Around Home"? Do you consider Cathy's wide range of subject matter to have one specific style? Does she incorporate one major theme throughout her series? Throughout her work in general?
How are the two famous series' interrelated, if they are?
3 comments:
Not all of the images you showed in your presentation are on this post from the "being and having" series...but...I'm recalling the images of Cathy Opie with a mustache...and with the plaid cut off shirt and dark pants. I think it's difficult to figure out if the figures are "masculine" and "feminine" because those words are...really really complicated. I think that Cathy Opie dresses herself in these photographs in what is traditionally seen as masculine. And I think she still maintains a great deal of androgyny in the photographs. I'm still lead to question "okay is this person a man or a woman?" and i think that's the point of her work. I think that the thing society finds most frustrating about homosexuality, is that it often involves a blurring of lines when it comes to gender roles and expectation. And really, everyone loves definitions. But with the cross dressing that's occurring in the images, we're lead to think that there's something "shocking" and "controversial" about the androgyny and difficulty in determining the sex of the figure.
Perhaps I'm making a great generalization but I think Cathy Opie is confronting the viewer with the difficulty to determine "man or woman? which one is it?" and presenting the problem as a larger social question of "what the heck does 'masculine' and 'feminine' even mean?"
I remember the first photograph I have seen of Cathy Opie is the last one(the one she has the cutting on her back). I think she has really deep and sophisticated understanding of gender and she put a lot of her personal things into her work.
Last time we talked about the background she used in the photos which somehow reminds people of the old style of portraits and after looking at many of her pieces, I suppose she is admiring/praising/glorifying the (just as Christy said) blurring border of genders. not exactly homosexuality maybe, but at least we can see the complex and even perhaps her disagreement of the general definition of gender she is expressing via her photographs.
So, first I want to apologize. I haven't responded to any of the posts in a while, sorry guys.
To start, I had not seen any of Cathy's work until this semester and find it really interesting how she presents issues of homosexuality in her work. I agree with Chrisy, that her work contains a lot of androgynous imagery in her photographs, and thus forces the viewer to think about whether the person depicted is of a certain gender which shows how embedded gender in American society and how socially constructed gender and gender roles can be. I am not sure what the image is called but I really like the photograph of Cathy where her back is faced toward the viewer and she has cuts in the shape of a child's drawing of a model "home" and two mom figures. This piece speaks to me because of the cuts and the possible self mutilation or idea of self mutilation, because to me the idea of cutting oneself can be done for a variety of reasons, but one in specific, is self turmoil or pain that is on the inside that gets literally placed on the surface. So, with this said, I find it interesting that Cathy uses the cuts to show this drawing in cuts, which I interpret to be taboo. In American society, cutting is seen as taboo as can homosexuality in American culture.
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