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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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?

AH: As a woman artist, and as a lesbian artist, can you talk about how your experience is different from what you perceive as the average white guy?

CO: I’ve been incredibly fortunate—people follow what I do. There’s only a few areas in my life where I feel pissed off about being a woman artist—for example, in publication. In spite of the amount of work that I’ve made, there’s no solid history of monographs behind those bodies of work. If I were a male artist, that would be different. But I actually feel enormously fortunate—how many women at 47 years old have a midcareer retrospective at the Guggenheim?

AH: What’s interesting is that the show that’s up there now is the Louise Bourgeois survey. And you’re following that at a time when major museum shows for women are still rare.

CO: I was so excited to find out that the Bourgeois show would still be up while I was installing mine. It’s beyond cool. And maybe it sends a message to other museums.

AH: So much of your early work was from the point of view of an outsider. And now you’re becoming an insider. How does one reconcile that shift? How does that affect your sense of self? I think of myself as someone who, no matter what, is perpetually on the outside.

CO: I think that’s a good place to be, because the fault of a lot of artists is that they get comfortable with who they are in relationship to what they make. And I’m not that comfortable. There are certain motifs that I follow throughout my work, no doubt. Since the icehouses and surfers, I’m gonna remain fascinated, for some time, until I figure out this horizontal, segmented, panoramic landscape. But I hope that I always follow what I’m truly interested in. ’Cause I don’t really see photographs that look like mine anywhere else.

AH: For all of us, obviously, our work is very personal. But I look at yours and your exploration of gender and of S&M culture, as you’ve grown up and aged. And now, as a parent, those interests shift. I can’t decide if one can be a parent and still be into S&M. [Laughs]

CO: I’ve been thinking about that. Because my best friend has two kids, and it’s still a very big part of her life. After I had Oliver, we went out to her house where she has a chicken coop that’s [an S&M] playroom. And I was making some really cute woman ride around on a tricycle, while I was hitting her with a cat o’nine. And it just seemed so odd to have somebody ride around on a tricycle.

Then again, the young daughter of good friends of mine, Renée Petropolis and Roger White, came over, and we were going through the proofs for the Guggenheim catalogue. I had once photographed the girl: she’s part of the children’s portrait. We got to the self-portrait of the cutting on my chest, and I explained to her why it was important for me to make this piece. And she got it. Then she went home and told her parents that she had this incredible experience of me explaining the photograph to her. The next day, at a cocktail party, her father walked up to me and said, “That was the greatest gift you could have ever given my daughter.”

AH: That’s what’s so interesting about your photographs: the importance of honesty—to your work and to your life. I think that’s what people have to deal with when they look at the work. Some people would say it’s in-your-face, but I don’t think it is. It’s about clarity and putting something forward that is very direct and very available.

CO: I was thinking, actually, about the portrait of your daughter that I did in 2006. That sequence of images of her dancing for me. How is it to live with that piece?

AH: It’s so great. [Laughs]

CO: Because a lot of the portraits that I’ve done are almost too honest to live with, I’ve found. Recently, I did a commission of this fairly wealthy family down in Orange County. And when I showed the daughter the portrait, she couldn’t even speak. I just said: “Well, take it home with your family and sit with it.” I could tell that it was just too honest for her. But I can’t do anything else. I’ve tried—for magazines and editorial stuff. But my work always comes out being a bit too real. And I think that it’s this realness that interests me in photography—it’s why I’ve maintained the documentary status. Even though I may play with that definition, I want it to be about a real realness, and one that also reflects history, to an extent.

AH: It’s psychological realism. Which is, in some ways, the most difficult thing.

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.

AH: What’s interesting is that somebody would deem a nude photograph of a child pornographic.

CO: It becomes something that people make dirty. They wouldn’t just think like: Oh, look at that beautiful photograph of her son nude, the most natural thing in the world. I saw what happened to Sally Mann. I saw how she went back to the landscape. And if I was a writer, I would talk about the fact that Sally Mann had to go from that work to a return to landscape.

AH: But it’s also interesting that part of that shift was the progression of her children. They got older and either didn’t want to be photographed or, in the case of one, really did want to be photographed. Which, again, is a fascinating psychological thing. Her subject matter changed. In some ways, she went as far as she could go. But it will be interesting to see what happens next. She sent me, a long time ago, this huge picture of her and her daughters, naked on a rock, peeing.

CO: That sounds beautiful.

AH: She had written on it: Photo not washed. Will probably turn a fabulous piss yellow. It’s a wild picture of them, in a very celebratory stance. Any new work?

CO: Yes, and I have a new author that I’m playing off: Rebecca Solnit. I really like how she writes about landscapes. And that’s what I’m thinking about: landscapes. I recently did a body of work in Alaska called “The Blue of Distance,” which refers to her writings.

AH: What is it about her evocation of distance that catches you?

CO: It’s the way that she describes landscape in terms of the horizon line, which is similar to what I was playing with in my icehouses and Alaska images. She’s able to talk about distance in terms of a spatial relationship. Often, people don’t talk about the horizon in relationship to space; they talk about it more metaphorically. It’s especially pertinent to these time-based pieces that I’m playing with now. Instead of being one-off shots that I put together as a horizon, I’m creating these works in direct relationship to time. Generally, I think I’m influenced by what’s surrounding me, or what’s in the media. Going off to Alaska last summer, I had no anticipation of making a body of work that would become an exhibition. It was supposed to be a theater piece at this teeny, lovely theater in Juneau called Perseverance. I was going to make a series of landscapes, and then try to find a writer to work with, who in a Rebecca Solnit kind of way would make a very esoteric play in relationship to everything—from queer politics to getting stoned to the beach. These shifting landscapes of light that I did in sequence were supposed to pass behind the actors. But then the theater fell apart the week I was there photographing the art—both directors quit—and I took 1,200 photographs in 10 days.

AH: In Alaska?

CO: Yes, I photographed eight hours a day. I started sequencing passing moments on a boat, using these subtle shifts within the landscape to create this metaphor for ideas of time and nature. One piece is called “The Edge of Time,” which is a sequence of nine photographs that follows a cliff edge. It’s a very confusing piece to look at because your eye goes back and forth. You know that you’ve just seen a little bit of this landscape in the previous photograph. But, then, perspectivally, it doesn’t match up. As each segment gets revealed, more of a new segment gets revealed. Because it’s not a true panoramic; it’s optically confusing. I think that works well metaphorically, and they’re fun to make. I actually started enjoying making photographs again last year. I was tired of it, and I finally found my footing. I’m interested again. [Laughs] Which is a good thing, seeing as that’s what I do. 

“Catherine Opie: American Photographer” is on view at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, through Jan. 7. 

"Photo Op" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' October 2008 Table of Contents.