Catherine Opie, "Self-Portrait," 1993.
Catherine Opie is an American Photographer interested in documentary photography. Throughout her successful career, Opie has explore the politics of identity within the LGTB community. Surrounded by her lesbian community in San Francisco during the 1990's she developed a series of close-up photographic portraits of her friends, which she titled "Being and Having". Here I include interesting pictures of her work.
Catherine Opie, "Frankie", 1995
Catherine Opie, “Chicken” , 1991
What do you think of her work, as offering visibility for marginal communities? How notions of gender fluidity challenge the social norms in regard of gender roles? I'm curious, what are your impressions of her work.
*in case you can't watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9lsY78C0_Q
An interesting posting! On one hand, Opie’s works give visibility of the LGBT community and challenge the hegemonic social norms of how genders and sexes; and yet, on the other hand, her works still “exoticize” the LGBT community and did not break the “difference” between the heterosexual-dominated world and the LGBT people. From the photos you posted, I got an impression that she, in some degree, is still reproducing the stereotypes of LGBT community. Most of the photos showed here are the portraits of butches or cross-dressers. These photos conform the stereotype of butch I have in my mind: keeping short hair, having lots of tattoos and body pierces. If her works are to challenge the hegemonic force of the representation of LGBT community, I think they should show the “ordinariness” of LGBT people, making them “people like us.”
ReplyDeleteI feel as though some of the questions raised regarding hegemony include how much it doesn't exist and how often people are unconsciously trying to avoid the topic. Her work definitely offers visibility to marginalized communities in that she's taking the time to show and photographically narrate what she feels are proper representations of these communities. In conjunction with the above is the fact that she's also a member of a marginalized community which truly gives her a valid voice. Although the goal in this response is not to hint at authenticity, but I truly believe that she has a reasoning and a methodology as well as a base and literal foundation for speaking to the topic via photographs.
ReplyDeleteHer work feels relevant and purposeful as well as challenging to what we see in a typical photograph that's seen as a stereotypical representation of many members of these communities. They are often given the label "queer" without a proper (if found) or remotely befitting title or reason for a parallel to grasp on to.
Lastly, with regard to gender fluidity, this is not only present from birth as it just so happens that we are either male or female, but in gender roles, it isn't valid. Fluidity is representative of all of our lives, the purposes they serve and the decisions that we make. People are not something to be measured in the form of gender roles and honestly, I believe that all of the case studies, blog posts and responses represent that this week.
Thanks Priscilla!
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should have put more photos! You can look online for more of her work... I think she might be also questioning this "exoticized" and almost stereotypical images... by offering the opportunity to audience to interpret...
What would people form her own community would think about seeing this pictures?
I feel like she is an insider for marginalizing community. See in the media the producers don't live in these communities to experience the LGBT community. The gender fludity change the social norms of gender roles because gender roles are expectation that different cultures encounter to be right for a male and a female. I don't hegemony doesn't exist because she is trying to get voice heard through photography to acknowledge queerness in her community. My first impression of her work was shocking to me because I never seen pictures to be shot in this particular way.
ReplyDeleteI certainly enjoy Opie's work and find her challenging of the binary restrictions to gender roles in the United States to be most valuable. I found her interview to be most helpful to understood what was behind her work. What I like about it as well is that although she is apart of a gay community, I don't think her work is really reflected a specific sexuality. Rather, combating gender norms, even taking butch norms to another level, doesn't always reflect someone's sexuality.
ReplyDeleteRelating back to this week's readings about how people market homosexuality and how people market to homosexual communities. Sender brings up the topic of how markets for gay communities focus on this aspect of "loyalty" to their group. Although Opie may be playing with the binaries set by our society, she also has been very loyal to her community. What's the significance? She is documenting beautiful pieces of a beautiful community of people, BUT whether she likes it or not, according to Sender, she is displaying a specific agenda for her marginalized community. How in the world can we escape the commodification of living in the United States? How is creating art and combating gender norms STILL pleasing the agenda of hegemony? Bahhh.
Great responses to the blog thus far! I'm really along the same lines as both Priscilla and Tichina. I agree with you, Priscilla, about her photos which may appear to enforce stereotypes about the community. However, in order for me to conceptualize these things, I must first have to understand that to question validity of the photos and whether or not they support or go against the stereotypes of butch and queers, we are basically in search of the "who" and "what" questions about who gets to represent a cretain community and what is being shown in order to solidify a question of visibility and authenticity. Furthermore, I really like the rest of your posts as some mentioned that gender fluidty and gender roles are not something you can measure. I think that Avila-Saavedra's discussion on essentialists and constructionists makes it clear that essentialism goes hand in hand with fluidity. However, I think constructionists ideas would fit my understanding of queer theory and representation of gender roles best because it is all socially constructed.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in refence to Catherine Opie photos, I would have to agree with Avila-Saavedra's statement that "inn the radical
and disruptive sense of the term, there is nothing queer about queer [media]
when the flexibility of the term is reduced to an interpretation that reinforces
the traditional homosexual/heterosexual binary" (pg. 11). Basically, these images represent the voices of a marganilized group while still appealing to mainstream society's representation of masculinity without exposing nothing to "radical" that could earn it the title of being queer (as far as the flexibilty of the term goes) .
Really love this posting! and really love Opie's work.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the way in which is chose to photograph these photos with different blank/sometimes slightly patterned backgrounds and figure very prominent really touches my emotional side giving me a raw and true representation of a community. I think that looking at her work speaks to the idea of visibility of queer individuals. As she said in the video, sometimes people will ask her if the model is male or female and she'll tell them but says that this isn't really the point of the work. Even though some people may not really understand her work I think that the fact that it is out there and shown is important for the LGBTQ community.
It's interesting to look at this series after discussing queer characters in television at length. This seems to me to be a response to the homogenized, normalized, gay characters that are presented in the media. The variances in individual sexuality and personal choices are often overlooked and consolidated into straight/gay, male/female. She says in the interview that the photographs are both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time: I think this is because of the simplicity of the straight-forward close-ups are compelling yet comfortable, bu the discomfort comes in when you try to categorize what it is you're seeing. The portraits challenge the common tendency to create binary categories.
ReplyDeleteI think Opie’s work offers outsiders a deeper look into this marginalized community. I think her pictures offers a voice to a voiceless people. Which why this is great example of hegemony because so many people act as if these groups don’t exist but she allows people to see they do. Which I believe her work is purposeful because this group is being represented by someone who relates to them.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do think that these particular photos do reproduce stereotypical butch images, it is still done to show the complexities of the LGBT community. I do this is a way to express counterhegemonic issues because it is still a stereotype fro the butch lesbian.The first photo is probably the one that struck me the most, for it looks like it was scarred into her skin, to shpow that this a very serious dream of hers, or her statement about her identity. With the the other photos, i was confused because I honestly couldn't tell if they ere men or women being photographed.
ReplyDelete