The first solo museum exhibition of this queer photographer’s work, Focus Series: Catherine Opie presented two series of black-and-white photos examining the urban architecture and infrastructure of LA. The Freeway series (1994–95) comprises forty images of the city’s “monuments,” as the artist called them, focusing especially on their anonymous underbellies. The largely traffic-less photos are presented as gray-toned platinum prints. The Mini-mall series (1997–98) clinically presented strip malls in LA in large, panoramic, grayscale prints, specifically highlighting those in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
Focus Series: Catherine Opie initiated the Emerging Artist Award, created by MOCA and The Citibank Private Bank, of which Opie was the first winner and was part of the museum’s MOCA Focus series (1992–1998), which was dedicated to presentations of distinct bodies of work by artists working in all media and featured a roster of distinguished local and international artists.