Photographer Catherine Opie is everywhere all at once this spring

It is, by immoderate measure, the twelvemonth of Catherine Opie.

In her downtown Los Angeles studio, Opie is preparing for 1 of the astir disposable stretches of her career, with enactment appearing simultaneously crossed Europe and Los Angeles. This includes a career-spanning survey astatine London’s National Portrait Gallery that volition question to Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy, arsenic good arsenic exhibitions successful Kassel, Germany, and Trondheim, Norway. Closer to home, a caller exhibit, “Holding Blue,” opens May 28 astatine Regen Projects.

Opie’s photos volition besides look this summertime successful radical shows astatine respective different L.A. creation venues, including the Autry Museum of the American West, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner, successful exhibits featuring photographs that hint a signifier moving fluidly betwixt intimate portraiture, civic past and the earthy world. Her enactment is besides successful the imperishable postulation of the Marciano Art Foundation.

“I don’t deliberation that galore artists person 5 truly ample shows successful 1 year,” Opie, 65, said during a caller interview.

Sitting adjacent to miniature mock-ups of the exhibitions, Opie noted that her longtime gallerist, Shaun Caley Regen, has christened this the “Catherine Opie World Tour 2026,” implicit with T-shirts.

Opie’s exhibition, “Holding Blue,” astatine Regen Projects centers connected a bid of Norwegian upland landscapes changeable implicit 20 days successful aboriginal 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Opie initially came to the attraction of the creation satellite successful the 1990s for documenting her queer assemblage and was declared the “American Photographer” astatine her Guggenheim retrospective successful 2008. At Regen Projects, however, her enactment takes a quiet, introspective form.

“Holding Blue” centers connected a bid of Norwegian upland landscapes changeable implicit 20 days successful aboriginal 2024. Opie became captivated by the Arctic airy during her archetypal travel to the portion much than a decennary ago, and she agelong hoped to photograph Norway’s celebrated “Blue Mountains.” The accidental arose aft she retired from UCLA, wherever she had served arsenic seat of the creation section and besides taught photography for much than 20 years.

“I thought it would beryllium truly large to bring the bluish mountains [to Los Angeles], not lone to punctual america of what we mourn for our h2o nonaccomplishment successful the Sierras, but besides arsenic a meditation for america arsenic a metropolis successful … mourning,” she said, referencing some California’s prolonged drought and the 2025 wildfires.

The 44 images astatine Regen, accompanied by 9 ceramic sculptures, bespeak connected the mountain’s changing airy and biology vulnerability, continuing Opie’s longstanding involvement successful however photographs carnivore witness.

In Norway, Opie hoped to research — and lend to — the agelong past of bluish successful art, from Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period to Yves Klein’s monochromes and Derek Jarman’s elegiac movie “Blue.” The resulting images seizure mountains and fjords dissolving into sky, rendered successful the heavy azure airy of the Arctic Circle. The upland photos volition besides beryllium connected show astatine the PoMo depository successful Trondheim.

When the Eaton occurrence exploded aboriginal past year, the images hung successful Opie’s workplace awaiting last edits. They took connected added resonance erstwhile Opie ceded the abstraction to 5 friends displaced by the flames, offering food, structure and a spot to regroup.

“I gave [the photos] archetypal to my friends of Altadena,” she said, adding that she was present sharing them with the larger community. Opie noted that the rubric “Holding Blue” refers to some the carnal beingness of the mountains and the affectional responses they evoke.

Reflecting connected the engaged year, Opie said she feels “incredibly moved and honored that I americium really an creator [who] tin marque a quality successful the satellite for young radical who are scared.” The biology vulnerability embedded successful the landscapes echoes fears that Opie sees spreading arsenic governmental hostility intensifies nationally.

This cyclic inclination is not caller to Opie, whose best-known works, peculiarly from the 1990s, brought unprecedented visibility to communities that modern photography astatine the clip seldom focused on.

Photographer Catherine Opie astatine her workplace astatine the Brewery Artist Lofts. She is preparing for 1 of the astir disposable stretches of her career, with enactment appearing simultaneously crossed Europe and Los Angeles, including a caller exhibit, “Holding Blue,” which opens May 28 astatine Regen Projects.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“The LGBTQ assemblage is precise overmuch inactive being harassed … homophobia and transphobia are astatine the highest that it has been since the ’80s, [during the] AIDS crisis,” she said, astatine 1 constituent tearing up arsenic she spoke astir the caller suicides of 2 friends.

For Regen, laminitis of Regen Projects, Opie’s quality to determination crossed subjects has agelong defined her practice. She recalled archetypal gathering the creator successful her Koreatown flat successful the aboriginal 1990s erstwhile she saw portraits that were featured successful Opie’s seminal bid “Being and Having.”

“There’s nary way, erstwhile I archetypal sat determination [that I could imagine] what a scope she had arsenic an artist,” Regen said. “How she could spell betwixt the astir … formal, exquisitely beauteous enactment to astir thoroughfare photography.”

That scope is evident successful Opie’s contributions to “California Light and Space (The 21st Century Version)” opening astatine David Zwirner connected June 4, and organized by erstwhile Museum of Contemporary Art main curator Helen Molesworth.

Opie photographed images successful that amusement from the balcony of her Hollywood high-rise. The photos alteration the city’s ambiance into fields of luminous colour — the Hollywood Roosevelt’s motion silhouetted against saturated reddish and yellowish skies, oregon the satellite suspended successful darkness. Molesworth said Opie’s enactment helps articulate the show’s thesis of framing today’s artists’ exploration of their situation — utilizing airy and abstraction to dismantle linear position — akin to what artists specified arsenic James Turrell and Robert Irwin did 50 years ago.

“Cathy knows that h2o and aerial conscionable and signifier a skyline line, but she’s taking a representation successful which [the line] is gone,” Molesworth said, describing Opie’s method arsenic “magic.”

For Molesworth, a longtime person of Opie’s, the artist’s enactment occupies a abstraction betwixt photography and coating — images whose standard and ambiance reshape however viewers acquisition light, landscape, and the built environment.

“Cathy ne'er gave up connected beauty, adjacent though quality is simply a precise hard and problematic concept,” Molesworth said.

“Cathy ne'er gave up connected beauty, adjacent though quality is simply a precise hard and problematic concept,” said curator Helen Molesworth of lensman Catherine Opie.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Opie plans to instrumentality to her long-running “American Cities” series, photographing Washington, D.C., this summer. Since 1997, she’s periodically turned her camera connected municipality landscapes, including Los Angeles and Chicago, utilizing architecture and nationalist abstraction to bespeak connected broader societal and governmental issues. This time, she wants to seizure the superior earlier President Trump’s proposals to reshape its monumental halfway statesman to alteration the district’s ocular and symbolic landscape.

Opie’s involvement successful photography arsenic a conveyance for healing extends beyond assemblage exhibitions. She is collaborating with designer Katy Barkan successful designing 4 meditation pavilions that she hopes UCLA volition erect for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Conceived arsenic spaces of respite for athletes — whom Opie believes are much often commodified than nurtured — the pavilions volition incorporated photos by the creator that bespeak California’s “fragile environment.”

The spaces are intended arsenic places of contemplation and rejuvenation for the athletes. Although Opie could usage immoderate of that herself, she shows nary signs of slowing down. Despite bouts of grief and governmental anxiety, she remains resolute.

“I’ll outcry successful the time and past get backmost up and thrust into the sunset.”

For Opie, endurance remains its ain signifier of hope.