Catherine Opie, Chronicler of Queer Communities, Opens First Major UK Museum Show

Catherine Opie b. 1961, United States Follow +

Catherine Opie, American photographer and trailblazing chronicler of queer communities, opens her first major UK museum show today at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Via almost 80 photographs, including several of her trademark portrait series—alongside interventions into the gallery space—Catherine Opie: To Be Seen explores 30 years of the image-maker’s career.

In a statement, Opie outlined her hopes that “the audience will leave the exhibition with a broader understanding of what portraiture can achieve—that in our culture of creating portraits of known nobility and a kind of celebrity, that everyone begins to understand identity through being seen”.

At the heart of Opie’s practice is an ongoing commitment to capturing images celebrating community and identity. Grounded in the documentary tradition, her work frames portraiture as a radical act of representation and a gesture of belonging and resistance.

To Be Seen includes Opie’s most notable work, Being and Having (1991), 13 photographs of a circle of friends inspired by 16th-century painter Hans Holbein’s portraits of the Tudor court. But, despite their historical references and baroque styling, Opie’s portraits capture a contemporary notion of identity and belonging. 

Across three rooms, the show will further delve into the artist’s career. The first space will hold Opie’s early works; the second, a collection of portraits and landscapes inspired by art history; the third places two series: High School Football (2007–2009) and Surfers (2003) into dialogue with one another. 

In her interventions within the permanent collection, Opie delves into the history of the National Portrait Gallery to examine the public’s relationship with national identity and the influence of institutions on who is represented and how.