Sunil Gupta (photographer)

Sunil Gupta
Born1953 (age 72–73)
New Delhi, India
Education
AwardsMBE (2026)

Sunil Gupta MBE (born 1953) is an Indian-born Canadian photographer, based in London, England. His work explores themes of sexual identity, migration, race, and family. Gupta has produced a number of books and his work is held in the collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Tate. In 2020, he was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. He was awarded an Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2026 Birthday Honours for services to art and to the LGBTQ+ communities.[1]

Early life and education

Sunil Gupta was born in New Delhi, India, in 1953.[2][3] He attended St. Columba's High School in New Delhi until 1969.[4] In 1969, Gupta migrated to Montreal, Canada, with his family.[5] There, he attended High School of Montreal until 1970.[4] From 1970-1972, he studied at Dawson College, Montreal.

From 1972–1977, Gupta studied for a Bachelor of Commerce in Accountancy at Concordia University, Montreal.[4] Whilst there, he embraced his sexuality for the first time. He joined a campus gay liberation movement group and took photographs for its newspaper.[6]

In 1976, Gupta studied photography under Philip Halsman and Lisette Model at The New School for Social Research, New York City.[4] From 1978–1981 he studied for a diploma in photography at West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham, UK. From 1981–1983 he gained an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in London. In 2018, he gained a PhD at the University of Westminster, London (2018).

Work

Gupta's career has been spent "making work responding to the injustices suffered by gay men across the globe, himself included",[5][7] including themes of sexual identity, migration, race, family and decolonisation.[8][9] His work is fundamentally political, exploring the politics of his own life as a queer, Asian man.[9]

Gupta's series include the street photography of Christopher Street (1976); Reflections of the Black Experience (1986); Pretended Family Relationships (1988); Memorials (1995); the narrative portraits of From Here to Eternity (1999); and the highly staged and constructed scenes of The New Pre-Raphaelites (2008).[5][10]

Gupta has described his portraiture as a "constructed documentary style".[9] He has also created self-portraits, such as in his series Here to Eternity (1999), which was made partly in response to a period of illness brought on by HIV.

Career

In 1983, Gupta moved to London.[11][5]

In 1988, Gupta was one of the founders of the Association of Black Photographers (now Autograph ABP) in London.[12]

In 2019, he served on the jury that chose Susan Meiselas for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.[13]

From 2020-2021, Gupta held the exhibition From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective at the Photographer's Gallery in London.[9] The exhibition featured images from his series The New Pre-Raphelites (2008) and Sun City (2010), amongst others.

Gupta was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2026 Birthday Honours for services to art and to the LGBTQ+ communities.[1]

Personal life

Gupta is married to Charan Singh, also a photographer.[14] They live in Camberwell, south London.[14]

Gupta was diagnosed with HIV in 1995.[14]

Publications

Books of work by Gupta

  • Pictures From Here. 2003. ISBN 0-9542813-2-2.
  • Wish you Were Here: Memories of a gay life. New Delhi: Yoda, 2008. ISBN 978-81-906668-0-0.
  • Queer. Prestel, 2011. ISBN 9783791350998.
  • Christopher Street 1976. London: Stanley/Barker, 2018. ISBN 9781916410688.[15]
  • Lovers: Ten Years On. London: Stanley/Barker, 2020. ISBN 978-1-913288-12-9.[16]
  • London '82. London: Stanley/Barker, 2021. ISBN 978-1-913288-31-0.[17][18]

Books of work with others

  • Delhi: Communities of Belonging. With Charan Singh. New Press, 2016. ISBN 978-1-62097-265-6.[19][20]

Books edited by Gupta

  • An Economy of Signs: contemporary Indian photographs. Arts Council England; Rivers Oram, 1990.
  • Ecstatic Antibodies: resisting the AIDS mythology. Edited with Tessa Boffin. Arts Council England; Rivers Oram, 1990. ISBN 9781854890054. Photographs and text.
  • Disrupted Borders: an intervention in definitions of boundaries. London: Arts Council England; Rivers Oram, 1993.

Awards

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions and exhibitions paired with others

Year Title Institution Location Notes Ref
1994 Trespass 3 Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver [23]
2004 Homelands UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside California [24]
2005 - 2006 Sunil Gupta Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography Ottawa [25]
2018 Dissent and Desire Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Houston, Texas With Charan Singh [26]
2020 - 2021 From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective The Photographers' Gallery London Curated by Mark Sealy [27][5]

Exhibitions curated by Gupta

Collections

Gupta's work is held in the following permanent collections:

References

  1. 1 2 3 "No. 65091". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 June 2026. p. B19.
  2. ↑ "Sunil Gupta's best photograph: cruising for sex in New York City". The Guardian. Interviewed by Edward Siddons. 5 December 2018. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  3. 1 2 Tate. "Sunil Gupta born 1953". Tate. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "About". Sunil Gupta. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sunil Gupta on his life, his work, and gay-rights since the sixties". British Journal of Photography. 6 October 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  6. ↑ Fulleylove, Rebecca (3 November 2020). "Sunil Gupta on 45 years of making pictures". Creative Review. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Sherwin, Skye (26 June 2020). "Sunil Gupta's Untitled No 12: love, poetry and protest". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  8. ↑ "Sunil Gupta's photographs document 50 years of gay liberation". The Economist. 5 November 2020. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Mara De Wachter, Ellen; Sealy, Mark (Autumn 2020). "Mark Sealy on artist and photographer Sunil Gupta". Art Quarterly: 4–5.
  10. ↑ "From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective". The Photographers' Gallery. 18 December 2019. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  11. ↑ de Souza, Pauline (2002). "Gupta, Sunil". In Alison Donnell (ed.). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge. pp. 132–3. ISBN 978-1-134-70025-7.
  12. ↑ "Autograph ABP – Art Term". Tate. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  13. ↑ Greenberger, Alex (17 May 2019), Susan Meiselas Wins 2019 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, ARTnews.
  14. 1 2 3 Cernik, Lizzie (11 May 2020). "How we met: 'He was very sexy but also very honest and good'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  15. ↑ Cowan, Katy (21 November 2018). "Cruising on Christopher Street: Sunil Gupta's nostalgic images of New York's gay scene in 1976". Creative Boom. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  16. ↑ Rosen, Miss (29 September 2020). "Sunil Gupta's Pioneering Portraits of Proud Gay Couples". AnOther. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  17. ↑ Whitfield, Zoe (2 December 2021). "'I Put the Camera Everywhere': Sunil Gupta's Vivid Photos of 80s London". AnOther. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  18. ↑ Cresswell, Joanna (15 December 2021). "Sunil Gupta collects his archive of London's street passers-by in the 1980s in a new book - 1854 Photography". www.1854.photography. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  19. ↑ Ongley, Hannah (10 April 2017). "photographing the intimate, ordinary lives of india's illegal lgbtq community". i-D. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  20. ↑ Moskowitz, Peter (12 November 2016). "Documenting the Secret Lives of India's LGBTQ Youth". Vice. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  21. ↑ "RPS Awardees in conversation... Sunil Gupta HonFRPS". Royal Photographic Society. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
  22. ↑ "Honorary Fellowship". The Royal Photographic Society. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  23. ↑ "Sunil Gupta". Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  24. ↑ Roug. "Where they're coming from". Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  25. ↑ "Sunil Gupta". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  26. ↑ Gray, Chris (30 January 2018). "Dissent and Desire Shows the Complexity of LGBTQ Life in India". Houstonia. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  27. ↑ Cochrane, Lauren (8 October 2020). "Sunil Gupta: photographing India's queer scene over 50 years". The Face. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  28. ↑ Williams, Elaine. "Review: Pictures of hope and despair". New Scientist. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  29. ↑ "Sunil Gupta". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  30. ↑ "Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections Object : Untitled". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
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