Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Nursing (detail), 2004, Chromogenic print, 40 × 31 in.
When we shared Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait/Nursing, thousands of viewers fixated on one detail: the word carved into her chest.
The questions came quickly. Is that what it says? Why is it there? What does it mean?
The answer lives ten years earlier, in Self-Portrait/Pervert.
In noticing the carving, questioning it, and forming their own conclusions, viewers were no longer simply looking at the work; they were participating in it.
Catherine Opie, born in 1961 in Sandusky, Ohio, now living and working in LA, has been taking photographs since she was given a camera for her 9th birthday. Even then, she thought that by taking pictures of friends, family, and her neighborhood, she could map her reality and “make statements about her time that would become a part of history.”
Catherine Opie Self-Portrait/Pervert, 1994, Chromogenic print, 40 in. x 29 7/8 in.
In Opie’s Self-Portrait/Pervert, photographed in 1994, she felt it important to document herself in the BDSM sub-community. With a fresh, elegant carving of the word “Pervert” on her bare chest, needles inserted into the skin of her arms, and a leather hood covering her head, photographed against a royal black background that evokes stability and calm in her pose. Reclaiming the word that so many people called her behind her back, Opie is able to create intimate means of communication. Timed in response to Jesse Helms and his campaign to end funding for AIDs research, the piece was not only in defiance of the heterosexual community, it was also witnessing the leather community being disowned. Motivation for Opie to create a statement to the gay community for increased visibility and acknowledgment of the community’s erasure.
Ten years later, Opie challenges normality in Self-Portrait/Nursing. Now a mother, Opie reworks one of the most trite images of religious iconography, that of the Virgin and Child. With a similar backdrop and a healed carving on her chest as she nurses her son, we get a hint of her life and work on Self-Portrait/Pervert. Becoming a mother did not change her belonging to the lesbian SM community; in choosing not to hide her torso, Opie reveals complex intimacies while challenging yet honoring the classic image of mother and child.
Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Nursing, 2004, Chromogenic print, 40 × 31 in.
What some saw as a contradiction is exactly the point. Opie refuses to conform to a single identity. Mother and radical. Tender and confrontational. Sacred and subversive. The image challenges the viewer’s need for neat categories.
As a young photographer, Opie once asked herself, “How can I hold somebody’s attention for more than a few seconds?” Decades later, she still does.
Over 260,000 people viewed this work on our Instagram on March 26, 2026. Many paused at the carving. Many commented. Many questioned. In doing so, they gave the image renewed life.
Because art is never only what you see, it’s what you make others see.
Catherine Opie
Born: 1961, Sandusky, Ohio Lives and Works: Los Angeles, CA Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts, San Francisco Art Institute in 1985, and Masters of Fine Arts from CalArts in 1988 Exhibitions (selected): 2026 - To Be Seen, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; 2026 - The Pause That Dreams Against Erasure, The Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; 2008 - Catherine Opie: American Photographer, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; 2015 - Portraits and Landscapes, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; 2016 - 700 Nimes Road, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA Awards, Grants, and Artists Residencies (selected): 2021 - Departmental Chair of the UCLA Department of Art; 2019 - Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial; 2016 - National Academy member; 2016 - Archives of American Art Medal; 2009 - Women's Caucus for Art: President's Award for Lifetime Achievement; 2006 - United States Artists Fellowship; 2004 - Larry Aldrich Award; 2003 - CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts