Catherine Opie

"Bo," Catherine Opie. Courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Photographer Catherine Opie has a show opening at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum on Friday. Hilarie Sheets wrote about her recently in the New York Times. She is a wonderful photographer. Here's one reason why I like her work:

An anthropological interest in home and identity, and the idealistic belief that images can help bring about social change are both fundamental to Ms. Opie’s wide-ranging photographs.

Here's another reason why I love Catherine Opie's photographs:

“Cathy likes to use these art-historical quotes to seduce the viewer into looking at things that they don’t necessarily want to look at,” said Jennifer Blessing, the Guggenheim’s photography curator, who organized the show to underscore the breadth of Ms. Opie’s work. “Through the familiarity of the iconography as well as the incredible formal beauty of the photograph, she hopes the viewer will respond sensitively to the things and the people she depicts.”