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Yosemite Falls by Catherine Opie
Photo CreditPhoto credit: Heather Rasmussen
Photo CaptionYosemite Falls (detail)
Yosemite Falls
Photo CreditPhoto credit: Heather Rasmussen
Photo CaptionYosemite Falls (detail)

Yosemite Falls

Artist
Year2016
Classification photograph
Dimensionseach: 8 x 16 feet (243.8 x 487.7 cm),
each framed: 98 x 194 inches (248.9 x 492.8 cm)
Credits Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Location

  • Catherine Opie wrote this description of her artwork for the U.S. Courthouse in Los Angeles:


    “My artwork for the courthouse uses nature as a place of meditation, and represents a truly iconic California landscape.  I’ve distributed a fragmented image of Yosemite Falls over each of the six floors of the Light Court. 


    “One of the most important elements of this piece is how it functions within the architecture of the building.  The incredible Light Court already invites daylight into the building and onto the photographs.  The height of the six floors conceptually holds the scale of the grandiose view of Yosemite Falls.  These various floors allow for different views of the falls, in the same way that a hiker’s vantage points change when approaching the real falls in the natural environment. You have to roam the building in order to experience the piece.  There is not one vantage point where you can see all six panels. You have to experience them by actually experiencing the architecture.


    “The building inspired me, because it’s a reflective building that also fractures the space; I realized that the outside cladding would reflect the city, but it wouldn’t be a mirror reflection; it would be a fragmented reflection.  That allowed me to think about the falls as fragmented.”