Across seven rooms the works appear alongside a selection of portraits from Scotland\u2019s national collection that ask questions about the politics and practice of portrait-making, drawing connections with the works of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Young British Artist Gillian Wearing<\/a> and baroque Italian painter Benedetto Gennari<\/a>.<\/p>\n Born in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1961, Opie<\/a> has transformed the landscape of contemporary photography through a body of work that is as politically inquisitive as it is visually compelling. She has redefined portraiture and documentary photography by bringing queer culture, overlooked communities, intimate relationships and everyday lives into sharp focus, challenging conventional ideas of identity, belonging and representation.<\/p>\n From self-portraits and family studies to images of subcultures, landscapes and public spaces, her works have reshaped conversations around who is visible in contemporary culture. Opie has influenced generations of artists and curators through her focus on power, community and the social fabric of American life. She has also spent 25 years as professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she continues to inspire a new generation of American photographers through teaching and mentoring.<\/p>\n To Be Seen tracks Opie\u2019s dedication to pushing boundaries. Early works present this queer artist\u2019s own body as what she has described as a \u201cbillboard of identity\u201d, challenging conventional assumptions about gender, sexuality and self-representation. Later photographs adopt a more intimate feel, exploring family, motherhood and ageing through works such as Self Portrait\/Nursing (2004).<\/p>\n Here, Opie\u2019s painterly portrait of herself breastfeeding her son is placed next to Picasso\u2019s \u201cblue-period\u201d painting, Mother and Infant (1902), showing a woman from the back, head tilted, nestling her baby against her shoulder. Created a century apart, these two very different portraits connect through the universal experience of motherhood. And while Opie\u2019s nakedness and tattoos in a Madonna-and-child pose contrast strikingly with Picasso\u2019s more chaste and dreamlike portrayal of the mother-child bond, both are equally tender.<\/p>\n These photographs are shown alongside selections from her Surfers<\/a> (2003) and High School Football<\/a> (2007-2009) series, which move beyond the studio to examine communities that are part of the landscape of contemporary America.<\/p>\n In Surfers, atmospheric seascapes and closely cropped figures emphasise the relationship between humans and the vastness of the natural world. The unguarded portraits of teenage football players offer a nuanced reflection on community, vulnerability and the ways American masculinity is constructed. These works demonstrate Opie\u2019s ability to connect the personal and the political, using photography to explore belonging and the social bonds that shape everyday life.<\/p>\n What becomes increasingly clear throughout the exhibition is the extent to which motherhood transformed Opie\u2019s practice. Following the birth of her son Oliver in 2001, her work shifted from the confrontational body politics of the 1990s towards a more subtle exploration of family, care, intimacy and belonging.<\/p>\n Rather than presenting the family structure as biologically fixed, Opie turns her lens on the emotional bonds that sustain people\u2019s lives and communities, examining chosen relationships and queer networks, and validating alternative forms of home. This is exemplified in a portrait of Elton John\u2019s family in Elijah, David, Elton and Zachary (2025).<\/p>\n In her In and Around Home series, everyday moments among friends, partners and relatives become quietly radical acts of visibility, while portraits of her son, including Oliver in a Tutu (2004) and Oliver and Mrs Nibbles (2012) capture childhood as a place of play, curiosity and ambivalence.<\/p>\n These works are complemented by earlier self-portraits such as Self-Portrait\/Cutting (1993), in which a childlike image of two women and a house is carved into the artist\u2019s back, expressing a profound longing for family, recognition and belonging.<\/p>\n Together, these works reveal how motherhood became a turning point in Opie\u2019s practice. Her focus widened from identity to the networks of care, intimacy and belonging that sustain everyday life, bringing a new emotional depth and tenderness to her portrayals of family, home and queer living. \u201cI always want to take a human portrait. My goal in life is always to enter into everything with great care and with great humanity,\u201d she once said in an interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the 2010s and 2020s, Opie moved beyond portraiture to investigate landscapes, architecture and institutional spaces, examining how power inhabits our environments. From Los Angeles freeways and America\u2019s National Parks, to photographs made during and after her 2021 residency in Rome, her attention turned to ideas of authority, belief and nationhood.<\/p>\n
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