The Story Behind the Work

(Catherine Opie)

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Friday, January 9, 2009

Sally Mann isn't the only contemporary photographer in "Role Models: Feminine Identity in American Photography" whose work and themes echo those of painter Mary Cassatt's.

You'll find the subject of mother and child, or more generally, family, in works by Tina Barney, Carrie Mae Weems, Angela Strassheim and Mary Ellen Mark. Mark's 2003 photograph of a former child prostitute, "Tiny in the Bathroom With Ray Shon and Tyrese, Seattle," eerily evokes Cassatt's scenes of mothers bathing their children.

The deep bond between a nursing mother and the baby at her breast, also seen more than once in "Mary Cassatt: Friends and Family," is the subject of a 2004 self-portrait by photographer Catherine Opie. Opie may be a lesbian -- and the raised scarification across her naked bosom may read, sarcastically, "Pervert" -- but the contemporary artist makes the same point as Cassatt: There is no closer, or more universally understood, connection.

-- Michael O'Sullivan