During this class, and the past art history classes I have taken with you, I have found myself gravitating towards pieces thatchallenge and question gender and gender performance. While I had originally wanted to find a way to incorporate Claud Cahun’s work into my essay theme, I spent the past few days thinking about how the perceptions of gender in photography have evolved since Cahun’s work in the early 20th century. In pondering this, I found myself thinking about the work of Catherine Opie, specifically, Oliver in a Tutu, 2004. While we have not examined this piece in our Gender, Art, and Western Culture class, I remember learning about it in our Art History 1970-Present class. As someone who identifies as non-binary, I remember this piece resognating with me deeply due to Opie’s exploration of the personal as political and the underrespentation of what it means to raise your kids in a community that goes against the idea of the nuclear family. In Catherine Opie’s, Oliver in a Tutu, 2004, she documents the marginalized upbringing of a child in a lesbian home in the early 2000s and her son’s contentedness despite societal constructions of gender and traditional family structure. 

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961. At a young age, she discovered the work of Lewis Hine, an american photographer and sociologist at the turn of the 20th century notable for documenting the plight of child workers which was instrumental in creating child labor laws. For her ninth birthday, she received a Kodak Instamatic camera and began her photography journey immediately photographing her family and neighborhood which went on to inspire her work throughout her career often focusing on community. As a teenager, Opie knew she was gay, but the lack of supporting role models surrounding her made coming out a difficult process. Her experience growing up greatly influenced her role in choosing her subjects who were often a part of the LGBTQIA community saying, "It is really important to be out and do the work that I do. I want to create examples for younger people." By being openly gay and providing a space for those who are often overlooked in society, espically at the time in when she was photographing a lot of her subjects in the late 20th century, her work served as the role model she had never had for herself and other people experiencing the uncertainties of coming out. 

After going to school briefly to become a teacher because her parents did not want her to pursue a career in the arts, she changed her major and went on to receive her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985 and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1988. Three years later, she began to rise to fame with her Being and Having Series, portraying her lesbian friends wearing false mustaches, tattoos, and other stereotypical masculine accessories in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In this series, she shot extreme close up portraits juxtaposed with a bright yellow backdrop. Opie compared this juxtaposition to a Hans Holbein painting because it drew attention to the atypical subject and what it meant to perform gender.

While she derailed from her traditional subjects in 1994 to focus her attention on landscape and architecture, she returned to portraiture in her 1998 series, Domestic, traveling over 9,000 miles across the United States to depict lesbian families and couples participating in everyday activitues such as hanging out in their kitchen or outside, playing with their children, and cuddling on the couch. Upon viewing the series, it reminded me of Robert Frank's book, The Americans, in which he traveled across the United States in the 1950s illustrating a racial and class division in post-war America. In contrast to Robert Frank’s detached perspective, Opie’s intimate series displays a connection to her subjects as well as presenting subjects who are absent in mainstream representations. In this series, she depicts the unrepresented by photographing nearly every race, from younger to older, with different socioeconomic statuses, living in urban and suburban areas, and with their partners, friends, housemates, or their parents. Domestic is a photographic exploration deriving from the american dream of a nuclear family and instead presenting the idea that a family doesn’t need to consist of a mom and a dad to be considered a family. This is proven true when Opie gives birth in 2001 to her son Oliver, in her forties by intrauterine insemination, something she believed would never be possible due to her sexuality. 

 

Catherine Opie's portrait of Oliver in a Tutu, is the most defining piece in her In and Around Home series, 2004 depicting her son Oliver standing on a chair in front of a washer and dryer in Opie’s kitchen wearing an outfit of his own choosing. It appears as if Opie captures the essence of domestic life as a woman sweeps in the background of the image, a dog looks up to the sky, and magnetic letters stick to the washing machine. In the image, Oliver is backlit by a ray of sun highlighting him as the subject in the foreground wearing gender juxtaposing clothing and accessories such as a feminine: plastic tiara, beaded necklace, and a pink tutu and the more masculine: USC football shirt. Being Opie’s son, the picture explores the personal as political, providing a level of intimacy and candidness unlike any of her other pieces. During this time, gay marriage had not been made legal, and homophobia surrounding the idea of the queer couples being married or having children was very present. 

Even though this pieve seems similar to the themes explored in her works Being and Having series or the Domestic series for example, questioning the construction of gender and family structure, to me, it does not feel as if that is the piece's overarching message. Instead, I believe Opie poses that despite not being raised by the traditional nuclear family, Oliver is like any other child, content and someone who enjoys dressing up just as much as the next kid. It’s not about what he’s wearing or who raised him but that he is happy, which is what parents are supposed to want for their children. It also subconsciously suggests that Oliver does not yet know what constitutes societal gender performance and what the “correct” way one should dress based on their gender. While this definitely is not Catherine Opie’s most controversial work, it still denounces gender and conventional family structure which can be seen as a threat of traditional values as seen by George Bush’s banning of gay marriage in his 2004 campaign. Even though this portrait presents a happy, healthy, and safe Oliver, this piece very much reflects Opie’s struggle society thrust upon her raising a child as a lesbian woman in the early 2000s prior to many historical gay rights, and also reflects experiences that many other LGBTQIA people can identify with. 

Throughout the three pieces I explored in this essay: Being and Having Series, 1991, the Domestic Series, 1995-1998, and Oliver in a Tutu, 2004 it is very evident that Catherine Opie’s work is an accumulation of her experiences in America as a lesbian woman. Through her work she captures those who are not represented as a way to give a voice to those who are often voiceless or misrepresented in mainstream ideologies such as the American Dream or the Nuclear Family. In her social documentary work, Opie normalizes what it means to be a human without the construction of gender that serves to benefit some and limit others. While her work is praised for its challenging of long held beliefs on gender and family, it is sometimes discredited due to its non traditional depictions of nudity, cutting, female sexuality, queer culture, leather community, and breastfeeding portrayed in Self Portrait, 1993 and 1994, or Self Portrait Nursing, 2004. Though some view Catherine Opie’s images as perverted and unnatural, most praise her work that explores feminist and queer theory inspired from her own personal experiences and the role she has in capturing images that help acclimate queer identities into mainstream culture.