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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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CO: Reality’s become so conflicted by the idea of reality television. What is real, at this point? How do we redefine it? Who begins to act or perform in public, or in front of a camera, in a specific way that is only a performance of real? I try to take apart language in these different ways. And often my taking apart language happens through my making images of it. I’m doing the same thing with masculinity right now, with my high school football-player images. They’re the largest prints I’ve ever made: 48 by 64 inches. And they’re shot during football games; I’m calling them “football landscapes.” Because I’m really interested in creating an iconic definition, like I did with the “American Cities” series [begun in 1997]. And, for me, after cities, the next place to go for the American landscape is the football field. It’s the iconic place where we hold so many of our dreams—so much of our American identity. Especially young male Americans. But I didn’t want to shoot college football or pro—it was about the high school football player for me. It’s also about the fact that I have a six-year-old son. Who do we expect our sons to be?

AH: Right, right.

CO: When you look at the portraits of boys that I made in the past year, you can’t help but think of them as soldiers. The other day, I was watching Generation Kill on HBO, because I’m a popular-culture girl. And then I went online to these Flickr photo sites, where I looked at images by young soldiers who are documenting the war. They’re the images we don’t get to see. And I was looking at a photograph by this guy, Jake, taken before he went to war. And it’s Jake Wood, the football player. And it’s exactly what I see in the faces of these kids—the ones who don’t want to be football players, but also ones who perform being a football player—when they come before my camera. They’re sweet; they’re very real.

AH: That’s what’s so interesting about high school kids—that they’re on the cusp of something. Their bodies are still very much in progress.

CO: From freshman to senior is a totally different thing. I love looking at the little freshman-sophomore football players, compared to the junior-seniors. It’s such a beautiful thing to have unfold before you. So I don’t take it lightly that I have permission to be there. I’m not making fun of these boys. I’m not interested in making fun of anybody, ever.

AH: I think that’s a big piece of it: nothing you do compromises the integrity of the person in front of your camera. Even if it presents them in ways that aren’t beautiful, in the classical sense, or in ways they might not wish to be seen, it’s never degrading.

CO: I just think we’re humiliated too much on a general basis, as a culture. There’s too many possibilities for humiliation.

AH: What does the word transgressive mean to you?

CO: I think that whenever something is transgressive, automatically, five years from now, it’s just not transgressive anymore. It’s one of those historical terms. As history gets revealed, each person’s threshold for what is transgressive gets pushed back a little bit further. I think, in a certain way, it’s transgressive just to try to live your life the way you actually want to live it. [Laughs]

AH: And what about pornography?

CO: I like pornography. But being a mom, I’m horrified by child pornography. I have never done a naked, full-frontal photograph of Oliver. I’ve probably self-censored revealing something like that to the world. Although I’m glad that Sally Mann did what she did. But it’s an interesting thing when it comes to children. I’m not against it at all, but I know, politically and personally, what making nude photographs of my son would mean on a public level. And I’m not interested in going into that territory. Would that be transgressive of me? I don’t think it would be transgressive—I think it would be stupid.