Aperture Partners with Catherine Opie on New Title for The Photography Workshop Series

New York, August 18, 2026—This September, Aperture will publish Catherine Opie on Identity and Collectivity: The Photography Workshop Series. This new installment of Aperture’s best-selling Workshop series, Catherine Opie—best known for her sensitive portraits exploring identity and life on the margins of American society—invites five of her former star students to discuss a wide range of topics alongside her, from finding a distinct artistic voice, to the ethics of the camera, to the practicalities of making a photobook. In a series of engrossing conversations, Opie engages with Lucas Blalock, Janna Ireland, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Jeff Whetstone, and Carmen Winant, who offer insights into their individual and collective creative processes, while also paying tribute to Opie’s enduring influence as a mentor and trailblazer in contemporary photography.

With the Photography Workshop Series, Aperture partners with leading photographers from around the world to distill their creative approaches, teachings, and insights on photography, offering the workshop experience in a book. The books aim to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Additional titles in the popular series include workshops with artists Dawoud Bey, Graciela Iturbide, Richard Misrach, Vik Muniz, and others, all of which have been reprinted multiple times and distributed to global audiences.

A conversation between Catherine Opie, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Janna Ireland will be held on Saturday, November 21 from 4–6pm PT at Arcana, Los Angeles. Details are available at aperture.org/events.

Catherine Opie on Identity and Collectivity: The Photography Workshop Series is published by Aperture and available at aperture.org.

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Catherine Opie (born in Sandusky, Ohio, 1961) is an American photographer and educator renowned for her sensitive portraits exploring identity and life on the margins of American society. Her work is held in over fifty major institutional collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Portrait Gallery, London, and has been published in more than ten monographs. Opie is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Medal, and United States Artists Fellowship. She was a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, for nearly twenty-five years.

Lucas Blalock (born in Asheville, North Carolina, 1978) is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose work uses everyday material culture and photography to explore relationships to our shared environment. His work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Blalock is an assistant professor of art at Bard College.

Janna Ireland (born in Philadelphia, 1985) is a photographer whose work is primarily concerned with family and domestic life, the built environment, and the interaction between humans and nature. Her work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago, among others. She is based in Los Angeles, where she is assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Occidental College.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (born in San Bernardino, California, 1982) is a Los Angeles–based artist whose photographs weave together portraiture, queer networks of production and collaboration, and the material and conceptual potential of Blackness. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among others. He is associate professor in media arts and MFA program director at the University of California, San Diego.

Jeff Whetstone (born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1968) is a photographer whose images and films imagine America through the lenses of anthropology and mythology. His work is held in public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; New York Public Library Collection; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. He is based in New York and is professor and head of photography and director of the Program in Visual Arts at Princeton University.

Carmen Winant (born in San Francisco, 1983) is an artist and writer based in Columbus, Ohio, whose collage, mixed media, and installation work challenge understandings of women’s power, pleasure, labor, healing, and liberation. Her work has been presented at numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus. She is professor and chair of studio art at Ohio State University, Columbus.

Aperture wishes to thank Diane Sherman for her support of this publication. The Photography Workshop Series is made possible, in part, with generous support from S. B. Cooper and Rebecca Besson and the Besson/Cooper Fund.

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About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From our new home at 380 Columbus Avenue in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through our acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from Bobby Campbell Charitable Fund, Coach, David Dechman and Michel Mercure, Susan and Thomas Dunn, FotoFocus, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Celso M. Gonzalez-Falla, William Talbot Hillman Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Mailman Foundation, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, James McKinney, Richard and Ronay Menschel, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Robert Motherwell and Renate Ponsold, Neuberger Berman, New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Ms. Eliot Nolen of the Mary P. Oenslager Foundation Fund, Yesim and Dusty Philip, Theodore and Mary Jo Shen, Diane Sherman, Michael W. Sonnenfeldt/MUUS Collection, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

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Press Contact:
Lauren Van Natten, Aperture, publicity@aperture.org