Catherine Opie

I need to look at them.

I need to do what Catherine Opie does.

You know, she puts them up in a studio and she's like, on day four, if they still hold me, I know there's something there.

And I put them up and by day four or five, I'm like, okay, maybe this one image, it's the worst in inverted commas, the worst image on the roll, but it has something else because it's something I haven't seen before.

um and yeah it just sounds so much better especially the interviews where I am not that great at making the sound right so Rowan is covering up all of my mistakes so thank you You may also have noticed my attempts to create more video content including some reels about the London Dyke Deck launch event and I wanted to expand on what I said in the videos because I wrote out what I wanted to say and then realised it was way too long for a reel so here we go.

If you don't know, the Dyke Deck is a wonderful project from Elle, inspired by Catherine Opie's photography project of the same name.

They are both decks of cards with photos of dykes.

It does what it says on the tin.

Um, I think, well, artists that I really admire kind of did that, and just for some reason photographers are coming to mind.

But, like, Catherine Opie or Peter Hujar were artists that were taking these very intimate portraits, and even if they were somewhat staged, like in Catherine Opie's portraits, they just have an intimacy that you can, is undeniable.

Anyone, even outside of their community, would pick up on it immediately.

It's like, "Is this person a lover?" Like, "What is, what is going on here?" You just get access to that person's interiority in a way that is incredibly intimate and powerful.