Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie is a queer photographer best known for her self-portraits and portraits of queer subjects. She was first discovered for her Being and Having series which depicts her friends from the LGBTQ+ community, including the leather and BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) communities. Although she has branched out from queer communities and photographs other subjects such as football players and surfers, she is best known for her queer subjects and set the precedent for other queer artists as part of the Queer Art movement. Her signature style is of an unadorned bright background paired with a straight portrayal of a sitter that is often part of a marginalized community. The background, though unadorned, is often a reference to historic portrait paintings, such as those done by Hans Holbein. A particularly famous clash of past aesthetics and modern politics is that of Self Portrait/Pervert (1994). In this purposefully unsettling self-portrait, Opie sits topless facing the viewer with her hands in her lap in front of a Renaissance-style patterned fabric. On her head she wears a leather gimp mask and carved into her chest, which is still bleeding, is the word “Pervert” with embellishment beneath it. Her arms are pierced with two-inch needles. Although unsettling, Opie importantly confronts the viewer in this image to force them to consider the derogatory term that is thrown at queer people because of their gender identity or sexuality and how that name-calling affects queer people. By putting herself and other queer sitters in historically distinguishing poses and settings, Opie inscribes them with the authority and agency that they have been denied.

Self-Portrait/Pervert by Catherine Opie, 1994. Image by Lux & Jourik licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0