Poring over a new monograph of Catherine Opie’s diverse body of photographs, which was published during Gay Pride Month, I found myself wondering as a gay man if anything ties her renowned images of lesbians in the Bay Area to her pictures of freeways in Los Angeles, ice fishing houses in Minnesota, high school football games in Texas, and Elizabeth Taylor’s closets in Bel Air.
Is there such a thing as a gay or queer sensibility? And if so, is it the lavender thread running through an entire body of “straight” work by Opie, a lesbian who is the recently named chair of the department of art at the University of California, Los Angeles?