Joanne, Betsy & Olivia, Bayside, New York (1998) © Catherine Opie

From a feature on Catherine Opie in Art in America magazine’s December 2008 issue:

[For her] “Domestic” series (1995-98), [Catherine Opie] traveled the country photographing lesbian couples and families in their homes — her own version of the great American road trip embarked on by such photographers as Stephen Shore or Robert Frank.

[There's] the intimate, unkempt interior shown in Joanne, Betsy & Olivia, Bayside, New York (1998) (above). On the table are the remains of breakfast — coffee cups and half-eaten bagels — and toys litter the floor in the home, where two white women live with their adopted Asian daughter. Opie describes this work as a “conversation” with Tina Barney, whose photographs portraying conventional, wealthy families (below) were being widely exhibited at the time. But of course it was more an argument than a conversation, a challenge to the idea that a family must be defined within a heterosexual framework.

The Daughters #246 (2002) © Tina Barney