More than 80 stunning portraits are on show at the National Portrait Gallery in London for the Catherine Opie: To Be Seen exhibition.
Exploring themes of social, political and individual identity, Opie works across a range of different styles and locations for her work, to include studio portraiture, environmental studies and documentary images.
Working for more than three decades, the retrospective spans her important career, including her first major work Being and Having from 1991, which showcased her LGBTQ+ friends and were inspired by the court painter Hans Holbein and other baroque artists.
Overall, Opie’s work demonstrates a huge diversity. Whether documenting Queer communities in Los Angeles, or analysing the Catholic Church, or even turning her lens to the landscape to create abstracts, she is keen to document the fluidity of human culture.
Her work seeks to include balance and nuance, along with a desire to ensure the invisible becomes seen, without the temptation to turn towards sensationalism to make a point. A running theme throughout her work is a sense of shared humanity, and beauty.
Opie herself has worked closely with the National Portrait Gallery for this exhibition. It has been carefully curated with consideration for how those who visit the space relate to national identity. The exhibition is split into three rooms, and collides with other works in the Gallery to prompt discussion.
This is a collection of portraits that have not only been masterfully created, but together show a fantastic oeuvre that brings together the very essence of what it is to belong to humanity.
Interestingly, the exhibition also includes a number of self-portraits, showing us that you never have to go far to create meaningful and important portrait work.
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen runs at the National Portrait Gallery until 31 May 2026, while a book of the same name is also available. After the exhibition finishes in London, it will tour to the National Galleries of Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy building in Edinburgh in summer 2026.
© Catherine Opie, courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul; Thomas Dane Gallery
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