We spent most of this week in London, which always serves as a great reminder what a fantastic city it is to visit and how hard it is to be there. OK, that last part is a bit over-egged. We both had a great time, but there was a Tube strike, I caught a cold, and spending time in the U.K. capital (we'll see how long that phrase means what it currently does after the May 7 elections!) is exhausting!

I bought a bunch of stationery (Edinburgh is a fabulous city, but it lacks an A++ stationery store), did some great book shopping, saw an old friend, and caught some really interesting culchah. We went to see Sara Wheeler, the author of a new biography of Jan Morris, talk about the book at the National Liberal Club down on Whitehall--a trip in itself. It was perhaps the straightest crowd I've ever been in, period, but definitely for what is surely a pretty queer book.

Time constraints meant I could only see one art exhibition, and it was easy to choose "Catherine Opie: To Be Seen" at the National Portrait Gallery. Why? Because how often does the major exhibition at a big national gallery feature a bunch of photos of dykes? What is the word for less frequently than rarely?

The exhibition consists of large-format, formally posed portraits mostly of queer women (and for reasons that seem random but work in the context of the exhibition, youth football players). The photographs are beautifully composed, and the visibly queer subject matter is thrilling. In a portrait gallery, where you are focusing on the people in the art, seeing lesbian households, and butch dykes, and street protests is a reminder of how little we see ourselves in the larger world of art. (This is why I always seek out JEB's photos when I visit the U.S. National Portrait Gallery in D.C.)

For all that, though, I didn't really connect with the work. I've tried to figure out why, and I think it's that I don't feel like I know the women in Opie's photos. I can read bits of their identity--I can see they're on the LGBTQ spectrum--but that's as far as I can uncode. Opie works all over the U.S., but she is a West Coaster, trained and working in Northern and Southern California. The extent to which U.S. lesbian culture varies regionally is pretty significant but rarely acknowledged. I've never lived in California, I don't know its lesbian culture, and I couldn't place those women. I couldn't figure out their politics, what kind of work they do. Were they active in food coops? Community centers? Do they read books? Did they make magazines? I have no idea!

Of course, the same is true for a lot of the women in, say, JEB's classic book of photos, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, and I didn't feel that same distance with them. Perhaps it's the nature of Opie's style of posing her photographs that puts distance between me and the subjects? (And also maybe the fact that most of them are in color--I found it much easier to relate to Opie's black-and-white protest images.)

Another odd thing is that I didn't have this issue with Opie's photos that were placed alongside other portraits on the gallery walls. (Or as the NPG website puts it in pure artspeak, "a series of interventions places Opie’s photographs in dialogue with the permanent Collection.") One of the photos I stared at longest was her portrait of Elton John, David Furnish, their two sons, and two dogs. Formally, it's a pretty boring photo--Furnish's hand on John's knee marks them as gay, but it could be Sam Frank, Don Wilson, and their sons and dogs--there's nothing particularly ELTON JOHN about it. However, the photo is taken in a room that has floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and standing in front of the image I could read the titles on the spine of every single book, and that was amazing. (I could stare all day at those picture books that show artists/writers in their workrooms/libraries.)

I'm glad I did my lesbian duty and went to see the show, but as I was paying for a carabiner with the word "DYKE" on it--I don't think I'll use it, but I also couldn't resist it--I saw that the exhibition is coming to Edinburgh in August! The guy working the till told me the carabiners were a limited run and would only be available in London. We'll see!

(If you're ever in Edinburgh, do check out the lesbian corner in our National Portrait Gallery. There's no official signage, but it's hard not to notice that the subjects of all but one of the portraits in a literal corner of one of the galleries are Schwestern: Horse McDonald, Jackie Kay, Carol Ann Duffy, Joan Eardley, and at least one other I can't remember right now! And speaking of Joan Eardley: There's an exhibition of her fabulous work at Edinburgh's Modern Two until June 28.)

Recommendation: Funnily enough, the book I read on this trip turned out to involve a lot of considerations of lesbian archives and queer history sparked by interactions with old photographs. Hélène Giannecchini's AN ARMY OF LOVERS CANNOT FAIL was called something like "An Excessive Desire for Friendship" in the original French--and its main subject is redefining relationships to find a place in our lives and culture for enduring friendships and expanded notions of family. (The translation, by Anna Moschovakis, is excellent.) But Giannecchini is really great at decoding photos--she has a particular affinity for anonymous photos of anonymous people--and of the importance of making sure those lives don't get lost and forgotten. I am embarrassed to say I didn't know of Donna Gottschalk's work before reading this book, but I'm going to address that right away! Also, this feels like a good place to repeat Urvashi Vaid's line that an army of lovers will never get out of the barracks!