DC 3933, Catherine Opie (American, b.1961), Emily, Sts, & Becky, Durham, North Carolina, 1998, Chromogenic print, 40 x 50 in. (102 x 127 cm), Gift of John MacMahon ’95.
I first studied Catherine Opie’s work in relation to Laura Aguillar’s work in an environmental studies course. Both artists have made work depicting queer bodies in Los Angeles and elsewhere. I am drawn to Opie’s work due to its candid portrayals of domestic life outside of the heteronormative narrative largely promoted in fine art. When I discovered we had a print of Opie’s in our permanent collection, I was immediately intrigued.
Opie grew up in Sandusky, Ohio and later moved to California to attend the San Francisco Art Institute and the California Institute of Arts. After receiving her MFA in 1988, she moved to Los Angeles where she began working as an artist. Opie’s work has received international acclaim. She has taught at both Yale University and the University of California Los Angeles. Most recently, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue her cultural portraiture. Emily, Sts, & Becky, Durham, North Carolina is part of Opie’s Domestic series. For this series, Opie went on a three-month road trip across the US photographing lesbian women in different domestic spaces and living situations. Opie writes about her work, “It relates to the way that we either begin to look at people, ideas of community, our relationship to both things that we see, and necessarily don’t see; about the spaces in between.” As we continue quarantining in our own domestic spaces, Emily, Sts, & Becky, Durham, North Carolina offers an alternative domestic space to consider. I can most definitely empathize with the aura of boredom and hunger surrounding these individuals.