Catherine Opie: Cleveland Clinic | "Exclusive" | Art21

Episode #163: Photographer Catherine Opie describes her intentions behind the permanent installation "Somewhere in the Middle" (2011) at Hillcrest Hospital, a branch of Cleveland Clinic, in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. Created specifically for the hospital setting, the installation consists of 22 photographs taken from the shores of Lake Erie near Opie's hometown of Sandusky, Ohio. It is Opie's hope that the photographs provide a space for patients, doctors, vistors and hospital employees to experience an ethereal moment during what may be a difficult time in their lives. Catherine Opie investigates the ways in which photographs both document and give voice to social phenomena in America today, registering people’s attitudes and relationships to themselves and others, and the ways in which they occupy the landscape. Working between conceptual and documentary approaches to image making, Opie examines familiar genres—portraiture, landscape, and studio photography—in surprising uses of serial images, unexpected compositions, and the pursuit of radically different subject matters in parallel. Learn more about Catherine Opie at: http://www.art21.org/artists/catherine-opie CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Wesley Miller & Susan Sollins. Camera: Mark Falstad & Laura Paglin. Sound: Darryl Dickenson & Heidi Hesse. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Catherine Opie. Special Thanks: Cleveland Clinic. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

[CATHERINE OPIE] Sometimes people are coming to the hospital

and they're camped out here in their loved one's room

for four or five days and

for them to be able to get up and walk around for a moment

while they're having some kind of test or medical procedure done

and engage with original work is really magical.

And also some people don't actually want to

go to a chapel in a hospital.

You know, you do need places that you're allowed to go

and have moments and thoughts and feelings that

aren't necessarily just within this one place of worship.

[JOANNE COHEN] We're looking for art that going to be engaging

where people really...I mean, you see them interacting with the art

and the engagement, it's palpable.

It's doing something--it's activating in some way.

Our mantra here is:

"Medicine cures you and art heals the spirit."

And we firmly believe that, that it's going to help you

get through whatever moment you might be encountering.

[OPIE] So this is the corridor

and the piece will be the full length of the corridor.

And then, one of the things that I actually loved upon my first visit here

was that you end with a fractured landscape with that roof.

And I thought that was really interesting,

and there was a moment of poetry for that--

it fractures the landscape.

It creates this other kind of horizon line.

And that will end up being referenced of what's happening in here.

I'm hoping that if somebody is having a hard time

that they could come here and possibly sit and have this

kind of ethereal moment with the photographs.

My primary intention is--with this body of work, in making it--

is that you could come here over a 20-year span of time

and the photographs will trigger the same thing that it would to you

driving through your old hometown.

[MAN] Is this Edgewater?

[OPIE] Yeah, that's Mar.

[LAUGHING]

You're right.

[MAN] And you're on the pier?

[OPIE] Yeah, I'm on the pier.

[MAN] This one is my favorite one.

[OPIE] I'm glad.

You guys are working here now, you get to live with them.

It'll be a permanent installation.

[MAN] Oh yeah, this is my hallway.

I was going clean it, but y'alls were here, so...

[LAUGHING]

[OPIE] That's good!

Often, my work, I feel, only serves one aspect of

society, so to speak.

It's like, "my work is expensive";

"people who want to live with it, they have to pay a lot of money for it."

There's all of those realities that actually

bother me to a certain extent

But there is also a place that, fundamentally,

in the core of my being,

that I believe art needs to be public.

I don't want this to be installed anywhere else.

I'm not going to be doing an exhibition beyond here,

so if people want to see this, then they have to come here to see it.

And so that's important to me, because it's conceived for this place,

it's being designed for this space specifically,

and if you want to experience it, you've got to come to Cleveland.