Sunil Gupta was born in New Delhi, India in 1953 and moved to Canada as a teenager. He enrolled in a photography course at the New School for Social Research, New York (1976) and in 1978 moved to England, where he received a Diploma from the West Surrey College of Art & Design (1981), his MA from the Royal College of Art, London (1983) and a PhD from the University of Westminster (2019). Over a career spanning more than four decades, Gupta has maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing bodies of work that are pioneering in their social and political commentary.
Photographer Sunil Gupta was born on 8 September 1953 in New Delhi, India. He moved to Canada as a teenager in the late 1960s, studying for a Bachelor of Commerce at Concordia University, Montreal, before moving to New York to pursue an MBA. He simultaneously enrolled in a photography course at the New School for Social Research, New York, where he studied under the guidance of Philippe Halsman and Lisette Model. Gupta graduated from the course in 1976 and subsequently took up photography full time. He moved to England in 1978 and received a Diploma from the West Surrey College of Art & Design in Farnham, Surrey in 1981, an MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 1983, and a PhD from the University of Westminster, London in 2019, with his thesis titled Queer Migrations. Over a career spanning more than four decades, Gupta has maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing bodies of work that are pioneering in their social and political commentary. The artist's diasporic experience of multiple cultures informs a practice dedicated to themes of race, migration and queer identity – his own lived experience a point of departure for photographic projects, born from a desire to see himself and others like him represented in art history.
In 1976, the first set of photographs Gupta made as a practicing artist were taken in and around Christopher Street in Manhattan, using the camera as a tool for open expression. The series reflected the openness of the gay liberation movement, as well as his own 'coming out' as an artist. More than a nostalgic time capsule, the photographs revealed a community that shaped Gupta as a person and cemented his lifelong dedication to portraying people who have been denied a space to be themselves. In the series Exiles (1986-1987), commissioned by the Photographers' Gallery, London, Gupta returned to India and photographed gay men in front of a backdrop of famous tourist sites, the finished prints then presented alongside quotes from the subjects. Taken at a time when homosexuality was illegal in India, it was imperative for the artist to prove the existence of this community to himself and to the world. What is evident in this early project and has remained consistent in Gupta's practice is the use of photography as a conduit to meeting people, as he builds up a rapport with his subjects and finds new stories. For example, in Lovers: Ten Years On (1984–86) he sought to meet and photograph queer people in long-term relationships, in order to try to understand the recent break up of his own. In 1988, Gupta co-founded Autograph – the Association of Black Photographers, and in 1992 he was awarded an INIVA curatorial franchise, establishing the Organisation for Visual Arts (OVA), aiming to promote a better understanding of culturally diverse visual arts practices.
In the mid-1990s, Gupta was diagnosed as HIV positive, which caused the artist's focus to shift; although his practice had always had a level of introspection, this was brought to the fore in works using his body as subject matter. It was at this point he had a physiological discovery that digital photography – which Gupta had been working with for eight years – did not have the same transformative quality as film photography, stating that the 'dark room is magic' and 'healing' (TateShots, 4 August 2017). This is exemplified through the series From Here to Eternity (1999), in which the artist documented his medical journey and mapped his South London environment, aiding his coming to terms with his illness. From 2004 to 2012, Gupta returned to living in India, during which time he photographed the queer community in a series entitled Mr Malhotra's Party, for which he photographed the young people he had come to know. In comparison to the earlier series, his subjects are more upfront and confrontational in their poses. Although there was still a high degree of invisibility for this community, Gupta captured a sense of defiance in these images – homosexuality was still illegal in India at the time, and yet people were determined to get together, meeting online and at private parties under fake names to defy the law. Most recently, Gupta has been developing a project centering around the topic of queer migration in Canada, coming to realise that his identity was partly shaped by his own migration.
Gupta has curated over 30 exhibitions, and has organised conferences, lectures and presentations internationally. In 2020, a major touring retrospective From Here to Eternity was held – a collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, London, and the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto; in the same year Gupta's work featured in Masculinities: Liberation through Photography which toured to Les Rencontres de la Photographie Arles, France (2021). Sunil Gupta's work is represented in several UK public collections, including the Arts Council of Great Britain, National Museum of Film, TV & Photography, Bradford, and Tate. Sunil Gupta currently lives and works in London, England.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Sunil Gupta]
Publications related to [Sunil Gupta] in the Ben Uri Library