Written by Makenna Karas

Photo Edited by Kelly Woodyard

A city is a storyteller. Turn this corner and relive the details of that horrible date. Cross the street and find yourself standing in front of your first apartment, which had awful noise but great lighting. You can almost reach out and hold the ghostly hand of who you were. There are secrets between you and your city, you and your past selves, secrets that have long since sunk into the concrete. In her recent exhibition, “Harmony is Fraught,” Catherine Opie is sharing hers with you. On display at Regen Projects through March 3rd, the exhibition is a love letter to Los Angeles, featuring over sixty images from the past thirty years that have never been seen.

A diary of sorts, the show features intimate moments of Opie’s life while also zooming out to offer a larger view of the world she invites you into. “6th St Bridge” encapsulates Los Angeles with its iconic freeways, palm trees, city skylines, and smog. The shot is hazy and largely vacant of any human presence, focusing instead on the concrete parameters of the place where the rest of the series takes you deeply inside of.

Zooming in, “Richard in Our Studio” provides that promised intimacy. Featuring a man sitting at a desk, surrounded by art; you notice that he appears to be lost in the beautifully painful experience of creating something. Opie invites us inside with her lens, allowing us access to the raw moment of an artist at work. Like many of the exhibit's images, the shot also functions as a microcosm of Los Angeles, a city notorious for its dreamstruck, struggling artists.

Self Portrait Cutting Contact © Catherine Opie

Yet Opie also allocates a plethora of space for preserving simpler, mundane moments of life that anyone can resonate with. Many invite for deeper conversations on sexuality and stigma, daring to expose the humanness that ties us all to one another. “Pam Shaving” unveils the curtain of a private moment, granting the viewer access into someone’s bath. It should feel intrusive, as if you are witnessing a moment you have no right to. Yet it doesn’t. It feels as natural as the warm California light that spills in through the window, illuminating the scene and connecting you to the moment

Connection continues to run throughout the series in a myriad of ways. “Club Fuck” beautifully documents the colorful, dyanmic energy of Los Angleles with such precision that you can almost hear the music blasting and feel your toes getting stepped on. There is motion and life to the scene that Opie has allowed to live on, long after the amp has been unplugged and the lights have flickered out. Not only do you sense the communal energy of the shot, but you feel that you are a part of it. “Fuck” casts community in a more intimate light, portraying two forearms holding on to each other, each with the word “Fuck” stamped onto their skin. Light falls onto their crossed arms while the rest of the shot falls into shadows. Their connection is a light in the dark, the dark that a city can so easily become without community.