Skyways & Icehouses

Since the late 1980s, Catherine Opie's interest in the motif of the visual road trip has resulted in photographic series that simultaneously document and question personal and collective identities that characterize America. For the past two winters, as the Walker's 2001 Visual Arts artist-in-residence, she has focused on two specific architectural elements in and around the Twin Cities: ice-fishing houses and skyways.

Working from the traditions established by such master photographers as Eugene Atget, Edward Weston, and Robert Frank, Opie is well versed in the medium's ability to reveal those signs in the built environment that shape people's sense of belonging. Her city series first focused on the hidden aesthetic language of Los Angeles mini-malls and the architectural feats of freeway overpasses. As a keen survey of history, her photographs of St. Louis, Missouri, address the contrast between the city's aspirations for urban development once envisioned in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and the realization of urban sprawl that has since displaced the downtown area. Her most recent works about New York's Wall Street District, finished shortly before September 11, should also prove historic.

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).

About the Artist