Photographer Catherine Opie is experiencing an extraordinary year in 2026, with multiple major exhibitions opening simultaneously across Europe and Los Angeles. A career-spanning survey at London’s National Portrait Gallery will travel to Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy, while other shows appear in Kassel, Germany, and Trondheim, Norway. In Los Angeles, her new exhibition “Holding Blue” opens May 28 at Regen Projects, featuring 44 images of Norwegian mountain landscapes shot over 20 days in early 2024, accompanied by nine ceramic sculptures. Her work also appears in group shows at the Autry Museum of the American West, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner. Opie, who retired from UCLA after serving as chair of the art department and teaching photography for more than 20 years, describes this period as the “Catherine Opie World Tour 2026.”
This moment matters because Opie, who first gained prominence in the 1990s for documenting her queer community and was declared the “American Photographer” at her 2008 Guggenheim retrospective, is now receiving unprecedented institutional recognition across continents. The “Holding Blue” series reflects her longstanding interest in how photographs bear witness, addressing environmental vulnerability and collective mourning—particularly referencing California’s drought and the 2025 wildfires. Opie’s ability to command five major shows in one year underscores her enduring influence in contemporary photography and her role in bringing visibility to marginalized communities, while her latest work offers a quiet, introspective meditation on landscape and loss.