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In this brief essay, I review Catherine Opie's midcareer retrospective at the Guggenheim focusing on 3 of her self-portraits that elaborate on her leatherdyke identity. Interpreting these works through the scholarship of Ann Cvetkovich and the literature of Dorothy Allison, I read the progression from Self-Portrait/Cutting to Self-Portrait/Pervert to Self-Portrait/Nursing as a photographic argument regarding how sexuality can be generatively constituted through traumatic experience.