Whilst the earliest works in Catherine Opie’s Girlfriends series date back to 1987, the series formally came into being in 2010 for an exhibition at Gladstone Gallery, New York. Opie delved into her archive to present a collection of intimate portraits that span much of her career, encompassing staged studio photography with more spontaneous snapshots. These photographs present a compassionate, humanistic view of LGBTQ and fetish communities, challenging regressive understandings of gender and sexuality whilst exhibiting a deeply personal relationship with her subjects. Like pieces of a photographic diary, many of Opie’s favoured sitters recur in her body of work.