I'm dying for the day heterosexuals have to come out': Catherine Opie and her astonishing shots of queer America

"Most of the photos were taken long before the Trump presidencies and yet, browsing the show, it feels like a powerful rebuke to the current administration so much so that it brings on a mood of almost hysterical relief. For 27 years, Opie taught photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and would tell her students that it was part of the mission of the serious artist to show an example in a public space of what it is to be brave."

"To Be Seen features some of Opie's most famous and bravest works, from her portraits of friends to denizens of LA's 1990s leather dyke scene: the iconic, androgynous Pig Pen, a friend who appears in a series of shots, looking coolly at the camera, daring the viewer to define them; her Being and Having series, an early challenge to gender norms featuring 13 butch lesbians posing in stick-on, Halloween-grade facial hair, in an absurdist performance of masculinity."

"In 1993, Opie staged what has become, to her annoyance, her most famous photograph, Self Portrait/Cutting, in which she, too, sits with her back to the camera, in this case with the bloody outline of a child's drawing of a house and family scored into her skin."

Catherine Opie's first major British museum exhibition, To Be Seen, showcases her career-long commitment to representing gay, lesbian, and queer Americans in art history. Featuring works from the 1990s onward, the exhibition includes iconic pieces such as portraits of LA's leather dyke scene, the Being and Having series challenging gender norms, and her famous Self Portrait/Cutting. Though created before recent political shifts, the work resonates as a powerful statement affirming queer identity and visibility. Opie's teaching philosophy emphasized artists' responsibility to demonstrate bravery in public spaces, a principle evident throughout her fearless documentation of marginalized communities and identities.

Read at www.theguardian.com