Catherine Opie: How to Take a Portrait

How to Take a Portrait, According to Photographer Catherine Opie

ARTSY EDITORIAL

BY CHARLOTTE JANSEN

OCT 5TH, 2017 2:53 PM

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  Catherine Opie, Self portrait/Cutting, 1993. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie, Justin Bond, 1993. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

As one of the leading fine art photographers working in the United States today, Catherine Opie has earned acclaim and attention for her portraits. For over 30 years, she’s taken photographs of herself, and of others—from the queer and S&M communities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, to surfers, high school football players, and fellow artists, like Kara Walker, Mary Kelly, and Glenn Ligon. Known for her contemporary take on a formal, classical style, Opie has recently looked to canonical Baroque and Old Master paintings for inspiration.

Now based in Los Angeles, Opie has served as a professor of photography at UCLA since 2001, and previously taught at the Yale School of Art, all the while sharing her mastery of the medium with younger generations of photographers.

As she unveiled a new series of portraits at Thomas Dane Gallery in London, we caught up with Opie, who shared the lessons she’s honed over the years, on how to photograph a portrait.

Have a question to answer

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  Catherine Opie, Nicola, 2014. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie, Thelma & Duro, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

“The most important thing to do is to begin with an idea that tries to answer some questions,” Opie explains.

With her most recent series of portraits—of subjects including David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Thelma Golden, and Duro Olowu, most of which were taken in London—she considered portraiture through history, from Old Master paintings to selfie culture, and sought to answer age-old questions around representation. “I’m trying to re-calibrate portraiture to an extent,” she explains. “What is it to stare and be stared at? I’m trying to approach that question through this body of work.”

At a time when portraits—celebrity portraits in particular—are ubiquitous, Opie emphasizes that asking critical questions before shooting is essential. “I started to think a lot about selfies in this day and age, where everything is photographed, and what it means to hold a person with an image now,” she notes.

“History holds us in some way, but what is it to be a contemporary artist and bump up against history by using an aesthetic of Old Master paintings within portraiture?” she asks. “Does it allow you to enter a subject in a different way? Even though the portrait is contemporary, it creates history, and photography has always operated very well on that level.”

Don’t force it

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  Catherine Opie, Jonathan, 2012. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie, Michele, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

When it comes to organizing and executing shoots, Opie has found that it’s best not to force her subjects into certain scenarios or emotions.

This begins with who she can and cannot shoot. “There’s always someone I want to photograph who I can’t get,” she admits, noting that she’s been trying to shoot a portrait of Joan Didion for 10 years; and for the portraits in London, she’d wanted to shoot Sarah Lucas, but it wasn’t possible.

Once a shoot is confirmed, Opie is careful to prepare her subjects, but not to give them too much direction. Beforehand, “I say it’s a formal portrait,” she explains, “but I don’t tell them how to dress.”

The day of the shoot, when the subject arrives at Opie’s studio, she offers them a beverage (“a coffee, or whatever”) and they sit down for a chat. “If they have the time to spend, if they’re not on a time crunch, we might talk for 30 minutes or so,” she says. “If it’s the first time meeting me, I want them to know and feel that the portrait is just a conversation, I’m not essentialist about my ideas—I care deeply about what I’m doing, but I’m not manipulative about wanting my subject to show a certain emotion.”

To accomplish this, Opie ensures that the atmosphere in the studio is as calm and neutral as possible. This is important not only in making her subjects feel at ease, but also to make sure that the resulting photographs (particularly her most recent series, shot over the last five years) do not aim to expose the essence of a person, but rather seek to create an intimate moment in time that speaks of the power of a portrait.

This also accounts for why Opie chooses not to play music, and speaks little during shoots. “Music informs a potential emotion. If you play jazz, and the subject hates jazz, you’re screwed,” she explains. “I’m very quiet about it all, I want them to create an internal space.”

The black backdrops Opie has chosen for her recent works are also a part of this neutral space. “The black background is also blank,” she says, “everyone is placed by me, it’s a controlled environment but it’s not a manipulative environment.”

Shapes are important

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  Catherine Opie, Kayla & Owen, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie

  Angela Scheirl, 1992

  Vivian Horan Fine Art

Opie’s only concession in her minimalist set-up is chairs. “I always have different chairs,” she explains. “Some portrait photographers have one chair, but I prefer different chairs because I want to have different shapes—shapes are really important to me.” Shapes are also crucial to her decisions around lighting and shadow.

“Lighting is a way of creating shapes as well,” Opie notes, “so when I’m casting a shadow or illuminating certain things, dealing with this black, absorbent background, I have to allow the light to wrap on the body and be specific in the placement, as there’s no shadow except on the figure.”

Shadow is a major contributing factor to Opie’s style; she uses shadow create interest, to stop the viewer and make them slow down. “I want to get to this place where I can give the viewer the chance to gaze at something with longing,” she says. “I think we need longing, we want to be held, we’re moving way too fast. Art is becoming a selfie moment—you wait in line to see a Kusama exhibition to take a selfie. These aren’t selfie moments. They’re designed for you to have some intimacy.”

Highlight the details

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  Catherine Opie, David, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie, Celia, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

In Opie’s recent portrait of David Hockney, small yet crisp details, like a smudge of paint on his trousers and the hearing aid tucked behind his ear, serve to help us connect with the legendary artist. Understated gestures are similarly powerful in the double portrait of Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma Golden and her husband, fashion designer Duro Olowu. In this case, it’s Golden’s hand gently resting on Oluwu’s, and a smile that pulls at the corners of her mouth.

Through details like these, Opie is able to reveal a sense of intimacy and vulnerability, and the humanity of her subjects above all. “Subtle things tell a larger story if you’re paying attention to those details,” she says. During a shoot, she says, she directs every micro-gesture, until the pose is exactly right.

“I think I’ve always been observing people,” she offers. “I’m always told I’m staring way too much!”

Be thoughtful and responsible

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  Catherine Opie

  Jenny, 2009

  Choice Works: Benefit Auction 2017

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  Catherine Opie

  Trash, 1994

  ClampArt

When her early works like Self Portrait/Pervert (1994) exploded in the ’90s, the artist’s own body was the center of attention; people saw the photographs and made assumptions about Opie as a person. “People I’d meet would tell me, I was really scared of you, but you’re actually really nice!” she recalls. That personal experience has contributed to the thoughtful approach she takes to capturing the likenesses of others.

“My line is no humiliation,” Opie explains. “Anyone can feel exploited to an extent, even if they’ve given permission. It’s about having incredibly clear parameters in relationship to why you’re making bodies of work.

“The biggest problem now is people’s fear of how the work is going to be represented, instead of trying to follow some kind of quandary and working hard to create bodies of work around ideas of representation,” she continues. “People are messy, especially now. Be thoughtful and responsible about it.”

This often comes naturally, though, as Opie often works with friends, acquaintances and fellow artists—people with whom she shares mutual trust. “Everyone who sits for me knows they’re giving me their permission to use the image,” she acknowledges. But even when consent is clear, she warns that subjects won’t always like the results. “It’s important to me that my subjects like their portrait, but most don’t,” she offers.

“You need to remain true to yourself and your ideas as an artist, and live with other people’s perceptions and expectations of you as a person,” she says. “If you get to be an artist and produce work for your whole life, it’s incredibly brave.”

Trust your intuition

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  Catherine Opie, Lynette, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie, Gillian, 2017. © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

During a typical shoot, Opie takes between 30 and 40 shots of her subject, from different angles and distances. But how does she know if a portrait is good? “I go through really quickly and hang it all on the studio walls and I live with it,” she explains. “I come in every day and ask if it’s holding me and if I still want to look at it. If I don’t, I go back to the contact sheets. Then, I start to think about the body of work together.”

This bleeds into her approach to editing. “If you look at a picture and you know that’s the one you want to be with, let that guide you. Editing for me is really quick,” she says. “I always tell my students, ‘Edit really fast. Don’t overthink it. Do it from a gut place.’ That sounds ridiculous, to an extent, but hopefully you already have a conceptual framework, in relation to those questions you’re trying to ask.”

Consider the portrait in physical space

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  Catherine Opie, David, Austin and Bryant, 2009. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

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  Catherine Opie

  Idexa II, 1993

  ClampArt

Rather than shooting portraits knowing that they’ll end up on social media, Opie says she still thinks it best to consider the viewer’s physical encounter with a photograph as the best way of seeing them. “I still say you have to see work in person—and think about that first,” she explains.

“At this point, we’re flipping through images all time, so if you want to create an experience, the architecture has to have a relationship to what you want to put in the gallery space,” she advises. “The digital space is like magazine space—it’s having your work live on past the exhibition. But ideally most people want to go and look at work and you need to think about the scale of your pieces, and scale in relation to the space you’re hanging the work.”

—Charlotte Jansen

The Art World Needs to Ditch Its Big-City Snobbery

ARTSY EDITORIAL

BY CAROLYN RAMO

OCT 9TH, 2017 4:00 PM

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  Digital Design and Brand Studio at The Goat Farm. Photo by Edgar Allan. Courtesy of The Goat Farm.

This is the first in a series of opinion pieces from contributors in positions across the art industry on how to create an art market that better serves artists. In this installment, Carolyn Ramo, executive director of the grantmaking organization Artadia, discusses how and why we must strengthen the relationship between the art world’s center and its periphery. Please send feedback, or your own suggestions, to comments@artsy.net.

With each month bringing news of another celebrated mid-sized gallery’s closure, much discussion has arisen about how to support galleries in the middle of the market. This is an important issue to address, but we must also consider how we can support emerging and mid-career artists themselves, given their sensitivity to market shifts.

For much of my career in the arts, I worked at commercial galleries in New York, and like many gallerists, I stayed abreast of the art offerings in New York, Los Angeles, and European cities like London and Berlin. That changed when I became executive director of Artadia in 2012, which took me from the commercial world to the non-profit one. Because Artadia awards unrestricted grants to artists in seven U.S. cities, I now travel widely throughout the country. One of the greatest joys of this job is discovering the large numbers of immensely talented artists living and working in cities beyond the major art market capitals.

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  Installation view of Sita Bhaumik's 2016 exhibition at Southern Exposure, Estamos contra el muro | We are against the wall. Photo by Sana Javeri Kadri. Courtesy of Southern Exposure.

This work that I see on studio visits and in smaller art spaces, despite flying under the radar for most of my colleagues on the coasts, is frequently more compelling than 90 percent of what I see at New York galleries. In Atlanta, where there is limited commercial support, artists have created their own communities, such as at The Goat Farm, a massive complex of studios and work spaces (next to, yes, some roaming goats). Many of the Chicago Artadia Awardees are part of the large network of teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an environment filled with discourse and collegial encouragement, and consider teaching to be part of their practice. In Houston, I’ve witnessed artists transform their garages into studio workspaces filled with intricate props and sets; others have created multi-building compounds where collectives gather to work on ambitious projects.

These artists are thriving because of the opportunities afforded to them by their city—where affordable space is in far greater abundance than in, say, Brooklyn or Hackney. In Atlanta, I once found myself in the attic studio of an artist who had been quietly creating stunningly abstract films—even building his own projectors—for many years. He was relatively unaware that his breathtaking work was so deeply original, and while he was happy to learn of other artists working in the experimental film medium today, he wasn’t distracted by comparison or competition.

Through this process of learning about gifted artists outside the central core of the art market, I’ve recognized my own snobbery and my prior attachment to mainstream markers of achievement. Truthfully, five years ago, even I had a hard time paying attention to art fairs that I considered too peripheral. Similarly, it should not be necessary for artists to pursue an MFA degree from a prestigious art school (saddling themselves with six-figure student debt loads) so they can be considered for studio visits.

It would be exciting to think these artists could have a chance at national and international success, and that we might see more than the same 300 familiar names being auctioned at Phillips, year in and year out. The strong 2017 Whitney Biennial was diverse in many respects, but geographically, not so much. Only two participating artists currently live in the South; most hailed from Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.

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  Installation view of Agnieszka Polska at Atlanta Contemporary. Courtesy of Atlanta Contemporary.

We need to ensure that a greater number of talented artists can make a living from their work, and can do it while living outside of America’s art centers. That entails strengthening the relationship between the core and peripheral art worlds, and it presents both a challenge and opportunity for art world participants of many stripes. Anyone engaged with the art market (such as curators, advisors, critics, artists, and collectors) should start by checking out the programs of small museums, artist-run spaces, and exhibiting non-profits (analogs to New York’s White Columns, Artists Space, or Art in General) that focus on local talent in cities outside of their own. Even if you can’t get there, it’s worth knowing what they’re exhibiting and what sorts of local talent exists that has not (yet) made it to the coasts.

A few examples are Diverseworks in Houston, The Lab and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, PICA in Portland, the Atlanta Contemporary, Threewalls in Chicago, and anyone participating in the arts network Common Field; these spaces have reputations for showing work of merit. Subscribe to their mailing lists so you’ll have a steady inflow of information and names from different geographic regions. Consider getting involved in these spaces, as your membership dollars there can have a much larger impact than at bigger institutions in major cities. Use Artadia’s Awardee artist registry and registries of other notable local and national grantmakers as a starting point to learn about artist-grantees from all over the country. For instance, check out the recent finalists for the Hudgens Prize in Georgia or the Chicago artists who just received 3Arts grants. These promising artists may be coming soon to a city near you, but this is a way to learn about them first.

For collectors and the advisors who help them build collections, understand that buying work is more than just owning a loved object that may appreciate in value; it can sometimes be an act of philanthropy. As you consider your purchases, set aside market data and an artist’s CV, and become part of the network that supports the artists whose work you admire. Once you have the privilege of getting to know an artist, their work, and their goals, think about how you could make a game-changing introduction on their behalf.

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  DiverseWorks at Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston. Photo by Paul Hester. Courtesy of DiverseWorks.

More mutually beneficial and inclusive partnerships are another way to bridge the gap. While it is difficult to manage with shrinking budgets, art critics should consider coverage outside of the city centers, possibly through syndicating work by local news organizations—perhaps the excellent stories regarding local artists in Bad at Sports or Glasstire, for example, could be published online in international periodicals. The exhibition exchange platform Condo brought smaller galleries from abroad to New York, giving them the chance to showcase highlights from their roster and gain exposure at some of New York’s most interesting gallery spaces. It would be great to see more impactful programs that facilitate introductions like the Curatorial Forum, hosted and arranged by EXPO Chicago, where curators from collecting institutions get to know Chicago and its artists, and can engage with the participating galleries at the fair.

Wherever they choose to live and work, most artists share one fundamental definition of success: to have the ability to continually create work, make a living off that work, and have that work be part of a larger conversation. Those of us who live in service of art should broaden our perspectives to include artists beyond our zip codes. That will require from us more curiosity and less snobbery—both worthy aims in and of themselves. If we succeed, the reward is a more diverse, vibrant, and inclusive art world.

—Carolyn Ramo