Catherine Opie in "Change" - Season 6 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[ atmospheric electronic music ]

[ CATHERINE OPIE ] What are you gonna say, huh?

What are you gonna say
to the camera?

You got to look at the camera.

The camera's over there.

No, not there.

It's over there.

Look, Sunny.

Camera's there.

I understood
from a really young age

that work had this potential
to convey time.

It was literally going
to the Toledo Art Museum

or Cleveland

and standing before
a lot of the masters,

realizing what that depicted

in relationship
to a narrative of the time.

The early portraits
of my friends

is because of Hans Holbein.

I was looking at Holbein

in relationship
to making that work,

especially the importance
of a history of aesthetics

when you might be photographing
subjects that people

don't really want to talk about
or look at.

It couldn't be
like a Diane Arbus photograph.

It had to completely focus
on the body and also color.

I had to seduce the viewer
in a different way.

Girlfriends, I think,
will always be ongoing.

I think that it's gonna be
just a collection of images

that I continue
throughout my life hopefully.

Diana Nyad is definitely
going to be

included in the body of work
when I exhibit it next.

- I like this blue.

I think it's good to photograph
it on a different color

than last year.

The photograph of her back is,
to me,

just, like, one of these

perfect, amazing
beautiful photographs

of this 61-year-old,
powerful woman.

- All right, here we go, buddy.
All right.

I want you to try to go
in your head

where you're going
when you're swimming, okay?

I just want you to be
in that place a bit.

Okay, blink,
and then open your eyes.

[shutter clicks]

And look right into the camera,
Di.

[shutter clicks]

- [indistinct speech]

- Yeah.

How's the light look, Nicole?

- It's good.

Her– the shadow's a little dark.

- Can I see?

I like that, with the cap on
and the goggles too.

- I like it too.

- I think it's good.
- Yeah.

- I love that.

- That's cool.
- That's beautiful.

Well, I think maybe I need
the 80 lens.

- Yeah.

[shutter clicks]

[shutter clicks]

I don't think
that Surfers would have existed,

in terms of me making them,

if I hadn't made the Icehouses.

The correlation
between Surfers and Icehouses

is this notion
of a temporary community

that exists on the water.

One is a frozen
temporary community.

The other is a community that
is out in the pacific ocean.

Both of them contain that kind
of metaphor of waiting.

You can slow down.

You can stop.

And you can maybe even have
an ethereal moment.

[birds squawking]

- The trick is
to not spill the coffee.

It's okay if the camera drops,
but the coffee.

I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio,

and we left when I was 13
to move to California.

Sandusky, Ohio
is the somewhat small town

that's located right
on Lake Erie.

It's most known
for Cedar Point Amusement Park,

Where everybody
from the Midwest comes.

Cleveland is about 45 minutes
north of Sandusky.

When the Cleveland Clinic
approached me

to do a body of work,

I immediately proposed
that I would

go and photograph Lake Erie,

and specifically
because I wanted

to go back to Sandusky.

- One thing I don't like is

how the birds go in my horizon.

I would prefer
that they would go away.

It's the first time ever
that I've ever been able

to do a piece
that is actually going to

stay there
for the life of the building.

[shutter clicks]

The fact
that I was commissioned

allowed me to spend a year

going in and out
on six different trips

to my hometown

and look at it again

Through a 50-year-old
photographer's eyes.

- I don't really like the waves
breaking that much in it.

Aw, it got me wet.

[shutter clicks]

[shutter clicks]

Every season that's represented
in the piece

is four photographs
of that season.

Except for winter has five.

And winter has five,
specifically,

because we always think
that the frozen landscape

will never disappear.

- This is sunrise.

This is sunset.

This is sunrise
in the same location.

You'll see the foot tracks here.

I love that a careful viewer
will pick up that little moment

that that is the same place
at different times,

different days.

But I love that the little
animal footprints are here.

And then there's just a slight
band of pink in the sky.

Just does– ugh–
all these crazy things.

Sitting with it isn't
sitting with it for a long time.

It's kind of like how
I photograph portraits as well.

I make decisions fairly quickly.

But I want to make sure
that I can walk into the studio

three days in a row
and have it hold me.

And now the biggest question is:
"Amusement park or sailboat?"

Now, I could do away

with the Cedar Point one
altogether

and go to
that really ethereal fog one.

See how attached I am
to Cedar Point as a place.

It's pretty nice.

[laughing]

It's a little sad.

So that's where you have to let
your nostalgia go away,

If you can.

I don't know.

[laughs]

I don't know if I can let–

I think so, ultimately,
to make a better piece, yeah.

So...

The fact that this is going
to be in a hospital setting

that can be life-changing
for people

for either good news,
bad news.

To be able to have a place
that's ethereal

to almost escape to.

And I think of change
in a certain way

As escape in my mind.

Like, they weigh out to be
a little bit of the same.

And I suppose that's, um–
that might be more personal.

You know?

It might have–

it might have more
of a personal relationship

To actually what this place
did to me when I was a kid–

was that I was allowed
to escape, sometimes,

situations that were
really hard on me

on an emotional level
within our family.

And literally,
I used the landscape

to change my emotional state.

And I think that
that kind of comes up for me

in relationship to, often,
how I photograph a place.

As I find this,
what I deem as a–

as a safe place to go.

[indistinct announcements
Over p.A.]

There were years that I
emptied out American cities.

And what I mean by emptying out,

that I just wanted to look

at the specificity of identity
through the architecture.

And so there weren't people
in those big panoramas.

I think it started
with the body of work

in and around home.

I was back on the street
with a camera in my hand

like I was in the early '80s
in San Francisco.

And I was looking
at these groups of people

that had come together,

either to celebrate
U.S.C. Football

or Martin Luther King

or a rally against
31 registered sex offenders.

I realized that it was
really important for me

to no longer
empty out the landscape.

But to fulfill
this other kind of notion

of creating documents
of our time.

I really wanted to make
American landscapes,

the notion
of American landscape

in terms of an identity.

[birds chirping]

- Oh, my gosh.

The trees are amazing.

- Oh, yeah.

Wisteria?

- No.

- No?

- Jacarandas.

- Oh, right.

- Yeah, wisteria's kind of
a vine that grows over things.

- Oh, yeah.

What–

- But people from the Midwest
say, "Jack-uh-ran-duh."

[sniffs]

Okay, let's go see
our garage friends

and see if they're nice

and let me take a picture
of them.

It's kind of a perfect
portrait day.

- Mm-hmm.

- Hey, guys.

How's it going?

Hey, how are you doing today?

You know, I live up the street,

and I always come here
and get my tires fixed.

I'm doing a photo series

of shopkeepers
in the neighborhood.

I was wondering if I could
do a portrait of you.

Okay.

Okay, ready?

Right here with me.

Just relax.

[shutter clicks]

Good. Let me look at that.

Ah...Very good.

Now, right here.

Okay, muy bien.

That's it.

Thank you very much.

Really appreciate it.

- Have a good time.

Thank you.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I really should learn
how to speak spanish.

- I know.

-It's really ridiculous.

I live in Los Angeles,
and I can't speak Spanish.

You studied French. What good
is that for you here, huh?

- I know.

I studied German.

It's not really working for us,
our languages.

- I know.

- See why that–
What happened with that?

[shutter clicks]

And again.

[shutter clicks]

Perfecto.

And again.

[shutter clicks]

[shutter clicks]

- Let me look at my focus.

Well, I like
how the window framed her.

- Yeah.

- That's nice.

- Yeah.

- That's a really kind face.

Yeah.

So...

The curator Jens Hoffmann

approached
a group of photographers.

And he wanted to extend
the body of work

that the farm security
administration,

the F.S.A. did in the 1930s

under Roosevelt

that was headed by Roy Stryker.

And Roy Stryker was the one
who got Dorothea Lange

and Walker Evans to make

these great documents
of the Depression.

The curator Jens Hoffmann

asked a group of
contemporary art photographers

to basically believe
that he is Roy Stryker.

and he's reexamining
and invoking

The F.S.A.

period of photography.

And I chose to photograph

the shopkeepers
in my neighborhood.

You know what I think
is more than the color in these

that work the best for me is

the quality of light,
that I have the daylight in it.

And I think that when
you're balancing strobe

with daylight–
and that's why I took down

the one of him, like, smiling
in the grocery store,

is because it was too strobe-y.

And the same with the manager,

it read too much
ss press photography, actually.

It's trying to get away
from kind of a journalist read.

And for me, part of that is

what happens with light
in an image,

that I need it to be balanced
between strobe and daylight,

for it to be effective
and for it to work for me.

Maybe...

I think this is
a lovely portrait.

I don't know if that one
will make it.

I like it, but I don't know if
it's a good enough photograph.

But what I know right now
in looking at these is,

these four do something

that I think that I can be
held with,

um, you know, the next day
coming into the studio

and the next day.

But as you make more,
that's the thing with editing,

then you go, like, "Oh, well,
this isn't gonna work now."

You just move it around
and you move it around

until it feels
like this right balance to you.

- Oh, my gosh.

He's getting so cute.

- Randy heavy.

- are you heavy?

Look at it.

Do you want to see the dog?

Ooh, I can't believe
it cleared up the way it did.

- I know.

The sun started coming out.

I was like, "Wow."

- I know.

Okay, you want to–
You want to go pick stuff, bud?

Let's go to the garden.

- We're gonna go to the garden.

- No.

- Uh-oh.

- Yeah, then you can come back
and play with your friends.

- Can I go too, daddy?

- Huh?

- Can I go too?

- Yeah, you guys can go.

You can go.

- No practice today–

- I know.

- So you're free.

- Yeah, you want to come down
to the garden?

You guys haven't been
to the garden in awhile.

Hey, Oliver, do you want
to get your scooter?

- No?
- I'm fine.

- Okay.

Agh!

Oh!

Ashley!

[laughs]

See, this is why I need to start
playing catch with Oliver.

Huh?

- Look.

One of the things
that drives me as a photographer

is just extreme curiosity.

- All right.

Are you taller than me now?

- I think that's it.

Almost.

- Oh, my god.

You are.

- All right, that's it.

Early on, I was always looking

at the formation
of community

in relationship to finding
myself within the populace.

One of the reasons that I have
been driven to the idea

of creating moments
of representation of my time is,

not only finding myself
within that,

it's also this unbelievable
human need.

- No worries.

There you go.

You just put
that in the compost.

So it seems, in a certain way,

I'm allowing myself to go back

to those
street photography roots.

It's, like, where I land
and what I observe

Is what I'm making images of.

- Limbo time!

- Whoa.

- Race you!

- I really wanted to play.

- No, you get to play right
after we walk in the house.

- Why walking into the house?

- It's how they finish
the piece.

They're filming us.

- What?

- Oh, look. I got a box.