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

Famed for having a child’s drawing of a family carved into her back, the photographer has devoted her life to queer America, from endurance swimmers to drag artists to her son in a tutu. Now she’s finally getting a major UK showThere is no direct reference to Trump’s America in Catherine Opie’s To Be Seen, the US photographer’s first large museum exhibition in Britain, featuring key works going back to the 1990s. Mythic and personal, the images depict the American landscape and American family. Above all, they are concerned with the 64-year-old’s career-long interest in the representation of gay, lesbian and queer Americans missing from mainstream art history. 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 te