Since the late 1980s, Catherine Opie's interest in the motif of the visual road trip has resulted in photographs that simultaneously document and question the self-constructed identities of the people and places that characterize America. From the freeways of Los Angeles to the downtown of St. Louis and the Wall Street district of New York, Opie now turns her camera to the skyways and icehouses of the Twin Cities.
The culmination of a year-long commission from the Walker Art Center, Skyways and Icehouses provides a meditative portrait of a locale, at once a straight-forward documentation and an inquiring social psycho-geography, an exploration of those symbolic architectures often taken for granted. Personal anecdotes, memories, and stories fron Minnesota residents animate Opie's haunting landscapes.