My Studio, Suzanne’s Work

2005

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Catherine Opie’s photographs are on view at the Orange County Museum of Art through Sept. 3.

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Lulled by the emptiness of the scene, the familiarity of her own backyard and the coolness of various greens in the blue afternoon light, Catherine Opie may not have realized right away that there was a picture here. The spark that made it take fire in her mind was probably that hot pink chair belonging to her son Oliver.

An out-of-place, edgewise detail like that is often what attracts a photographer’s attention. Wherever that first flicker of recognition came from, it was fanned by the extravagant gesture of the nude in the drawing inside Opie’s studio. Because she was working mostly in the darkroom at the time, Opie had lent the studio to her friend Suzanne Wright, who was in town as a visiting artist at UCLA. As the subject of the drawing flings her arm across the room, her left hand throws open the door so violently that the little pink chair is blown over.

There is a crazy, unexpected narrative here. It’s not uncommon that documentary photographs have been made to tell purely fictitious stories.