Viewing Catherine Opie: To Be Seen

Just opened at the National Portrait Gallery is this unmissable exhibition by the phenomenal American photographer Catherine Opie, whose works have shaped our understanding about representation, the power of visibility and the possibility of photography since the 1990s.

Her images feature friends, family and people from her community, as well as well-known culture figures and regular people, pre-school children and high school footballers, surfers and protestors – and herself. Moving between the individual and the collective, this exhibition brings together some of Opie’s most influential works over the past thirty years, including her Self-Portrait Nursing, as well as her early series Being and Having (1991), which features portraits of her friends within the queer community. These images challenge conventional ideas of gender and identity, presenting sitters who adopt playful yet confrontational performances of masculinity. Opie’s portraits often draw inspiration from historical painting traditions, particularly the formal compositions of artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger, while simultaneously depicting contemporary communities that have often been excluded from mainstream representation.

Elsewhere in the National Portrait Gallery, the show includes her newly unveiled commission, a portrait of Elton John and his family, and a series of interventions staged among the oil paintings, demanding to be seen, and recognised.