Chicago (American Cities)

During the past seven years, Los Angeles-based photographer Catherine Opie has undertaken a project in which she has systematically photographed key elements in several major American cities. Steeped in the documentary tradition and seeking to uncover aspects of each city’s identity and sense of community in her penetrating photographs, this series focuses on Chicago—the American “city of architecture.” This new body of work examines the spectacular way the city’s architectural monuments are nocturnally lit, complemented by a group of views of Lake Michigan at different seasons during the year. While the architectural photographs are horizontally formatted in black and white, Opie’s views of the lakefront are large-format color images, which enhance the lake’s changing light qualities and moods. These images present a nuanced vision of key aspects of Chicago’s identity in a revelatory and unexpected way that reflects an intermingled formal, conceptual, and documentary emphasis.

This project is curated by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs Elizabeth Smith, who also curated Opie’s first solo museum exhibition in 1997.

Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Sandusky, OH; lives in Los Angeles, CA) is known for her powerfully dynamic photography that examines the ideals and norms surrounding the culturally constructed American dream and American identity. She first gained recognition in the 1990s for her series of studio portraits, photographing gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals drawn from her circle of friends and artists. Opie has traveled extensively across the country exploring the diversity of America’s communities and landscapes, documenting quintessential American subjects—high school football players and the 2008 presidential inauguration—while also continuing to display America’s subcultures through formal portraits. Using dramatic staging, Opie presents queer and trans bodies in intimate photographs that evoke traditional Renaissance portraiture—images of power and respect. In her portraits and landscapes, Opie establishes a level of ambiguity of both identity and place by exaggerating masculine or feminine characteristics, or by exaggerating distance, cropping, or blurring her landscapes.

Opie received a B.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, and an M.F.A. from CalArts in 1988. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Museum of Art São Paulo (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil (2024); Heide Museum, Melbourne Australia (2023); The Current Now, Stowe, VT (2022); Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada (2020); Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (2019); Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles, CA (2019); Princeton University School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ (2018); Centro Internazionale di Fotographia, Palermo, Italy (2018); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2015); Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA (2012); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2011); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2006); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2002); and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO (2000).