“From Here to Eternity” marks the first major retrospective of UK based Canadian/Indian leading queer photographer, Sunil Gupta . Spanning five decades, this stunning and important new exhibition will bring together all the key series from his pioneering photographic practice for the first time, as well as presenting never-before exhibited works.
Born in New Delhi, India, relocated to Montreal, Canada, before studying at the Royal College of Art in London, Gupta has been using photography as a critical practice since the 1970s. Subversive, impulsive, personal and political, Sunil Gupta’s socially engaged projects have focused on such issues as family, race, migration and the complexities and taboos of sexuality and homosexual life.
Gupta’s retrospective at The Photographers Gallery in London will showcase works from 16 series over the past 45 years that reveal how he has used photography as a form of activism to address his experiences as a gay Indian man living with HIV, while also exploring ethical questions of documentation and representation that helped bring abut the formation of Autograph – the Association of Black Photographers, an organisation devoted to fighting discrimination in the UK.
Bringing together works from across his divergent and extensive career, From Here to Eternity features a range of series’ from street photography (Christopher Street, 1976) to narrative portraits (From Here to Eternity, 1999), along with highly staged and constructed scenes (The New Pre-Raphaelites, 2008) and a selection of early investigations into digital image making (Trespass, London, 1992-1995).
From participating in New York’s active Gay Liberation Movement in the 1970s to his more recent campaigning for gay liberation in India, Gupta has been inspirational to generations of photographic activists and LGBTQ+ rights campaigners.
“What does it mean to be a gay Indian man? This is the question that follows me around everywhere I go and is still ever present in my work”Sunil Gupta |
From Here to Eternity SUNIL GUPTA. A RETROSPECTIVE 9 OCT 2020 - 24 JAN 2021 LONDON: THE PHOTOGRAPHERS' GALLERY CURATED BY MARK SEALY
