Catherine Opie

Ron Athey
1994

A man with an extensive collection of tattoos covering his head, torso, and arms stands against a teal background. He has a shaved head, facial tattoos, and piercings in his nose and above his upper lip. His tattoos feature a variety of designs including geometric patterns, tribal motifs, and skulls. He is wearing black pants with lace-up sides and black shoes, and his hands are placed modestly in front of him.

A man with an extensive collection of tattoos covering his head, torso, and arms stands against a teal background. He has a shaved head, facial tattoos, and piercings in his nose and above his upper lip. His tattoos feature a variety of designs including geometric patterns, tribal motifs, and skulls. He is wearing black pants with lace-up sides and black shoes, and his hands are placed modestly in front of him.

Not on view

Date
1994

Classification
Photographs

Medium
Chromogenic print

Dimensions
Sheet (sight): 57 × 28 3/16in. (144.8 × 71.6 cm) Image (sight): 57 × 28 3/16in. (144.8 × 71.6 cm)

Accession number
95.104

Edition
1/8

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Norman Dubrow

Rights and reproductions
© Catherine Opie; courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles

API
artworks/9996

Audio

Catherine Opie, Ron Athey, 1994

In Human Interest

0:00

Catherine Opie, Ron Athey, 1994

0:00

Narrator: Catherine Opie took this photograph of the performance artist Ron Athey in 1994.

Catherine Opie: He's just a very incredibly amazing, giving, lovely person who has pushed the boundaries with his own body.

Narrator: This photograph came from a time when Opie had just started making studio portraits of her friends in the San Francisco leather community. She used brightly colored backdrops intended to recall the northern Renaissance painter Hans Holbein, who is known for the intense humanism of his portraits. Catherine Opie.

Catherine Opie: By using bright colored backgrounds, I was able to reference Hans Holbein as a painter and begin to create these very loving, political portraits at a time in which my community was decimated by AIDS, and really wanted to talk about the idea of identity politics in relationship to being an out queer person. I wanted to kind of redefine the notion of my own documentary practice, so that the site became the body.

Exhibitions

Catherine Opie
11 works in the collection

View artist