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Sunil Gupta
British Canadian photographer and HIV activist who uses art to strive for greater representation of the LGBT community
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Date of time spent in Britain
1977–2004, 2012–present
About
Sunil Gupta was born in 1953 and attended high school in New Delhi before his family emigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1969. He studied accountancy at Concordia University in Montreal between 1972 and 1977. However, he soon put his photography skills to use for the cause of the Gay Liberation groups he was involved with at the college. He also spent time in New York under the tutelage of photographer Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research. Pursuing his craft further, he went to Farnham in the UK to study photography at the West Surrey College of Art and Design. He completed his diploma in photography in 1981 and then, shortly after, he spent three years completing his master's degree in photography at the Royal College of Art. He has previously described how anglicized his childhood was in India, which allowed him to adjust to life in the UK; however, he noted a distinct difference in attitudes towards the LGBT community compared with his life in the US.
When he moved to London, Gupta initially planned to continue photographic projects he had started in New York. His work in New York, titled Christopher Street (1976), documented a vibrant gay scene in the West Village, capturing a positive time in that area between the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the HIV/AIDS epidemic which started in 1981. In London he attempted to replicate this vision of representing the everyday life of the gay community in Earl’s Court, but instead he encountered hostility and homophobia. These challenges also forced him to pursue alternative subjects in his early photography, and he continued to reproduce street-life scenes but largely through the lens of race and diaspora, and socio-economic inequality. In 1986 his work was selected to be included in an exhibition of Asian photographers in Britain called Darshan, which was funded by the Greater London Council.
Nonetheless, he remained committed to advocating for gay rights, working throughout the AIDS epidemic in the UK to dispel myths about the disease. He has revealed that he was diagnosed with HIV in 1995. It was through his work as an HIV activist that he met his current husband, Charan Singh, and they got married in Toronto in 2011, moving back to London a year later. Gupta and Singh now collaborate as photographers and have produced books on LGBT issues. Gupta obtained his PhD from the University of Westminster in 2019 with a thesis on ‘Queer Migrations’. He recently used his photography to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019–23
Fotofest, Houston, 2018
Gay liberation movement, c.1960s–1980s
Global AIDS epidemic, 1981
Havana Biennale, 1994
(ed. with Tessa Boffin) Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1990)
Disrupted Borders: An Intervention in Definitions of Boundaries (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1993)
An Economy of Signs: Contemporary Photography in India (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1993)
Pictures from Here (London: Chris Book, 2005)
Wish You Were Here (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India, 2008)
Queer (Mumbai: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011)
(ed. with Charan Singh) Delhi: Communities of Belonging (New York: New Press, 2016)
Christopher Street 1976 (London: Stanley & Barker, 2018)
Lovers: Ten Years On (London: Stanley & Barker, 2020)
We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography and Cultural Difference (New York: Aperture Press, 2022)
Come Out (London: Stanley & Barker, 2024)
Abel-Hirsch, Hannah, ‘Sunil Gupta on His Life, His Work, and Gay-Rights since the Sixties’, British Journal of Photography (6 October 2020), https://www.1854.photography/2020/10/sunil-gupta-on-his-life-his-work-and-gay-rights-since-the-sixties/
‘Artist and Curator in Conversation: Sunil Gupta and Mark Sealy’, The Image Centre (3 June 2022), https://youtu.be/-2U4CChrbFA?si=eq61w_kmah52UygG
Cernik, Lizzie, ‘How We Met: “He was very sexy but also very honest and good”’, Guardian (11 May 2020)
Cresswell, Joanna, ‘Sunil Gupta Collects His Archive of London’s Street Passers-by in the 1980s in a New Book’, British Journal of Photography (15 December 2021), https://www.1854.photography/2021/12/sunil-gupta-collects-his-archive-of-londons-street-passers-by-in-the-1980s-in-a-new-book/
De Souza, Pauline, ‘Gupta, Sunil’, in Alison Donnell (ed.) Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002)
Rosen, Miss, ‘Sunil Gupta’s Pioneering Portraits of Proud Gay Couples’, AnOther Magazine (29 September 2020), https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/12846/sunil-gupta-lovers-ten-years-on-book-stanley-barker-photography-interview
Sealy, Mark, Sunil Gupta: From Here to Eternity (London: Autograph, 2020)
Whitfield, Zoe, ‘“I Put the Camera Everywhere”: Sunil Gupta’s Vivid Photos of 80s London’, AnOther Magazine (2 December 2021), https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13748/i-put-the-camera-everywhere-sunil-guptas-vivid-photos-of-80s-london
See: Sunil Gupta website, https://www.sunilgupta.net/
MS 2478/A, Photographic work and associated material, c.1980–1990, Library of Birmingham, Birmingham
MS 2478/B, Projects; publications; and associated work, c.1980–1990, Library of Birmingham, Birmingham
0002755, Darshan: An Exhibition by Ten Asian Photographers, 1986, Four Corners Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate Institute
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
Entry credit
Ellen Smith
