Before the opening of LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries earlier this year, Los Angeles–based photographer Catherine Opie visited the building to create a series of portraits of our staff as they worked tirelessly to install artwork inside it and get it ready for the public. The series was conceived as a gift to the museum on the eve of our newest chapter, honoring the people behind the institution.
“You are all cornerstones to the museum for what you do here,” she told staff during the sessions. Not only were her subjects given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit (or stand) for a photographer as legendary as Opie, but seeing her in her element meant that they were also provided an insider’s look at her creative process and how she goes about taking her iconic portraits.
As with much of Opie’s work, an essential element of these photos is a simple but dramatic backdrop that frames their subjects. In this case, it’s the deep blue walls found in some of the galleries, their theatricality emphasized by the fact that no artwork was installed inside them yet. (This blue one of several custom hues that tint the raw concrete interiors of the Peter Zumthor–designed building.)
“When I first walked through the galleries, I was like, holy shoot, these walls are amazing,” Opie said.
The photographer was inspired by the famous portrait series by Irving Penn in which subjects like Marcel Duchamp, Duke Ellington, and Georgia O’Keeffe were photographed between two tightly compressed walls. “I started thinking about Irving Penn’s corner photographs, and the relationship between color, corners, and what it means to build a museum,” she said.
After settling on the backdrop, Opie developed a rapport with the sitters. “I really believe that making a portrait is a shared experience,” she said. Watching Opie work revealed a deeply collaborative approach to photography, one in which she engaged with sitters to adjust posture, gesture, and positioning in response to both the individual and the surrounding architecture, while still ensuring that there was dynamism and variation in the compositions: “I like portraits to have shape in them. I don’t like portraits to be just hanging arms.”
“How do you hold your body when you’re standing and talking to me?” she asked one sitter. Rather than directing people into poses, Opie encouraged them to settle into something natural, including a genuine facial expression: “The reason why I always tell people not to smile is we don’t go around the world like that.”
It became clear that, for Opie, portrait-making was less about performance than presence. “Take a deep breath in,” she said during one of the sessions, coaxing subjects into a relaxed mental state. “Think of your favorite people, your favorite places to be.” The resulting photographs capture a moment when both the new building and the people working to shape it were poised in anticipation of the future.
