Photo Op

Catherine Opie's Political Polaroids 

Portrait of Barack, 2008. Polaroid, 41/8 x 3 9/16 inches

Created by the artist for Modern Painters.
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Louise Bourgeois Robert Gober Sally Mann Catherine Opie Simone Leigh When in London for...The Frieze Art Fair A Soft Landing at Frieze? The Week That Was (October 3 – 10, 2008)

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A. M. Homes: What does the concept of a retrospective mean to you in terms of reevaluating where you are artistically and where you want to go?

Catherine Opie: I really feel that it’s a celebration. That a museum such as the Guggenheim wants to look at 20 years of my work just seems an incredible celebration. It also feels like the closing of an entire book and a chance to open up new avenues of where I want to take the work. There have been moments when I’ve been completely afraid of doing this show, but I think that fear is an interesting thing. And it will be thrilling to finally see the work installed together in ways that I’ve been planning for years in my head. I have the feeling that I’m going to experience a lot of emotion when I’m finally standing in those galleries.

AH: In many ways, I think of your work as your interior life. And it’s not just like a little of your interior life.

CO: No, it’s a lot. And I do wonder how it will be received. Because we’re in a political year, and I don’t necessarily think that the world is less homophobic than it was the early ’90s, when I was making portraits of my friends. Well, maybe it is a little less. The California Supreme Court—a Republican court—did just vote that gays and lesbians should be able to get married. And I don’t think that would have happened 15 years ago.

AH: Right.

CO: At the same time, we’re so far behind. Which makes it interesting that I’ve never been censored so far. For example, when I did that show of Polaroids of Ron Athey at Thread Waxing Space right after Giuliani tried to censor the “Sensation” show in Brooklyn. And Robert Gober got censored in Los Angeles because of putting the pipe through the Virgin Mary. I’m curious to see if that comes up in any way with my Guggenheim show.

AH: When you think about getting censored, does it affect the making and conceptualizing of your work for you?

CO: No, actually it doesn’t. There are motifs that I’ve employed within my work—certain kinds of art-historical strategies—that have kept me from being censored, I think. If you look at my Self-Portrait/Pervert [1994], the gold background and the way that it’s set up make it so formal and familiar—it’s a very different strategy than if it was shot in my home, right after a play [S&M] party. I think taking my work out of the documentary and putting it into another formal language has really helped me.

AH: Is gay marriage an issue for you now that you are raising a child with somebody? Are you married?

CO: We’re domestic partners, and we will get married, but not so much for us. For our son, Oliver. I want him, as a six-year-old boy, to be able to stand up, with our daughter, Sarah—Julie’s daughter—and watch his two moms get married.

AH: Your cover for this issue of Modern Painters, which is their election issue, revisits a piece that you did a long time ago, right?

CO: Yeah. Although I’m still doing Polaroids, like a funny piece I recently did of Barack and Hillary debating each other. But I only have two cases of Polaroids left. And I predominantly use them for the TV, because I think the idea of the manipulated media, through the unmanipulative ability of Polaroid, is a really nice thing to bring together.

AH: In terms of the state of our state—this being an election year—what are your thoughts?

CO: Gosh, I’m terrified. Hopeful, but with pessimism. If Barack wins, I think it’s going to be really healing for the country in relationship to the European alliance. And we need that: we’ve become a rogue country, and we’re broke.

AH: It’s amazing to me, for a democratic country, how not governed by the people we are at this point.

CO: That’s what’s driven me crazy over the past eight years: this touting of democracy. That’s what I look at in the “In and Around Home” series [2005]—and by doing Purple Finger, and works like that, with the Polaroids. Because how can we say that we’re bringing democracy to a country when the ability for us to run a democracy at home has been obliterated?