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Celebrated
photographer Catherine Opie (born 1961) has long documented the faces
and landscapes of American communities, both inside and outside the
mainstream. The subjects of her highly regarded portraits have ranged
from California surfers, friends and fixtures in LGBT communities, high
school football players and the artist herself. In this series of
photographs documenting the inauguration of President Barack Obama,
Opie broadens her focus to an expanded community of Americans: on
January 20, 2009, over one million people gathered on the national mall
to see the swearing in of America's first black president, united by
their pride at what had been accomplished and a collective hope for the
future. In the tradition of Robert Frank's photographs of the 1956
Democratic National Convention in Chicago and William Eggleston's 1976
Election Eve series, Opie's Inauguration, a series of 100 photographs,
offers an intimate political and personal view of one of the most
public days of a nation. Accompanying texts by author, curator and
photo-historian Deborah Willis and writer Eileen Myles address the
significance of Opie's achievement with this body of work and further
explore the wonder, elation and the self-conscious anticipations of
this historic moment.
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