Catherine Opie’s Queer Portraits Take Centre Stage in Edinburgh

Queer communities, family, identity and the power of being seen are at the heart of a major photography exhibition now open in Edinburgh. Catherine Opie: To Be Seen brings together nearly 80 portraits spanning more than 30 years of the acclaimed American photographer’s career.

Running at the Royal Scottish Academy until 1 November, the exhibition is the first major museum exhibition of Opie’s work to be shown in the UK and her first ever solo exhibition in Scotland. It has travelled to Edinburgh from the National Portrait Gallery in London and also forms part of the 2026 Edinburgh Art Festival.

Opie rose to prominence in the early 1990s and became particularly recognised for portraits documenting queer communities in Los Angeles. Her work has consistently explored who is represented, who is overlooked and how photography can make communities visible without reducing the people within them to a single identity.

To Be Seen expands far beyond one group or period of her work. Visitors encounter Opie’s mentors and collaborators, queer communities, children, surfers, high school footballers and political crowds, alongside self portraits that place the photographer herself within the wider story.

The exhibition also explores ideas around home, intimacy and family, including the different ways people create communities and relationships around themselves. That makes the title especially fitting, with the show asking not only who gets seen in portraiture but how and why particular people have historically been represented.

Opie has said that what matters most to her is people leaving her work with a better understanding of what it means to be human. That warmth runs through an exhibition which treats queer lives as part of a much broader conversation about connection, belonging and the people we choose to surround ourselves with.

Nearly 80 of Opie’s photographs are displayed alongside selected portraits from Scotland’s national collection, creating a conversation between contemporary photography and the longer history of portraiture. The exhibition has also been developed with accessibility in mind, including British Sign Language, audio described and additional digital guides.

For LGBTQ+ audiences, To Be Seen offers something particularly valuable: decades of queer people and communities photographed with individuality, humour, intimacy and dignity. It is an exhibition about representation, but just as importantly it is about people being allowed to take up space and be remembered.

Catherine Opie: To Be Seen is open at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh until 1 November 2026.

Tickets and information are available from the National Galleries of Scotland. Follow @csopie and @nationalgalleriesscot for more, and SoapLandTV for LGBTQ+ culture.

Images: Catherine Opie / National Galleries of Scotland.