Self-Portrait/Cutting

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Self-Portrait/Cutting

United States, 1993
Photographs
Dye coupler print
Image: 40 × 30 in. (101.6 × 76.2 cm) Frame: 43 × 33 × 2 in. (109.22 × 83.82 × 5.08 cm)
The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection (AC1997.24.1)
Photography
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Los Angeles–based artist Catherine Opie made this unflinching self-portrait as part of a series documenting the gay and lesbian S and M community....
Los Angeles–based artist Catherine Opie made this unflinching self-portrait as part of a series documenting the gay and lesbian S and M community. A crude image of two girls holding hands in front of a house, scratched into Opie’s back, represents the wish for a spouse of her choice and the "traditional" desires of home and family. By using a certain solemnity and formality borrowed from historical studio portraiture, Opie upends the norms of identity and sexuality.
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Bibliography

  • Barron, Stephanie, S. Bernstein and I. S. Fort, with essays by Stephanie Barron, Sherri Bernstein, M. Dear, Howard N. Fox and Richard Rodriguez.  Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000.  Los Angeles:  Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Berkeley:  University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Barron, Stephanie, S. Bernstein and I. S. Fort, with essays by Stephanie Barron, Sherri Bernstein, M. Dear, Howard N. Fox and Richard Rodriguez.  Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000.  Los Angeles:  Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Berkeley:  University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.

    View this publication in LACMA's Reading Room

  • Irmas, Deborah. This Is Not a Selfie: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2016.
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