Ambivalent Attachments: Love, Sex and Family in Works by Catherine Opie, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan

As the mainstream gay, lesbian and bisexual rights movement began to prioritize marriage equality and other forms of legal relationship recognition in the 1990s, some queer people were concerned about the repercussions of such campaigns. This thesis research examines two bodies of work by artists who self-identify as lesbian or queer women: the first two photographs in Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait series, Cutting (1993) and Pervert (1994), as well as Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s Object/Subject of Desire (1993). These works by Opie, Dempsey and Millan appear to manifest ambivalence about these contentious debates, which I seek to better understand. I engage with texts by a number of queer theorists, including Michael Warner, Lisa Duggan, Jack Halberstam, Lauren Berlant and Heather Love. Ultimately, the objective is not to argue that these works align with either side of the subcultural divide, but to show that identity and desire are more complex than binary thinking may suggest