(b. 1953, New Delhi, India)
Sunil Gupta is a photographer, artist, educator and curator who completed a doctoral program at the University of Westminster in 2018. Educated at the Royal College of Art, Gupta has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years focusing on race, migration and queer issues. In the 1980s, Gupta constructed documentary images of gay men in architectural spaces in Delhi, his "Exiles" series. The images and texts describe the conditions for gay men in India at the times. Gupta's series "Mr. Malhotra's Party" updates this theme during a time in which queer identities are more open and also reside in virtual space on the internet and in private parties. His early series "Christopher Street, New York" was shot in the mid-1970s as Gupta studied under Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research and became interested in the idea of gay public space.
Gupta's published work include the monographs: queer: Sunil Gupta (Prestel/Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011), Wish You Were Here: Memories of a Gay Life (Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2008), and Pictures From Here (Chris Boot Ltd., New York, 2003). In 2018, with Charan Singh, Gupta exhibited "Dissent and Desire" (catalogue) at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, which was accompanied by the book, Delhi: Communities of Belonging (The New Press, New York, 2016). His last publication was Christopher Street (Stanley Barker, 2018) and his forthcoming publications are Lovers: Ten Years On (Stanley Barker, 2020), and Sunil Gupta: From Here to Eternity (Autograph, 2020). His work has been shown in many important group exhibitions including "Paris, Bombay, Delhi…" at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, 2011, and "Masculinities" at Barbican, London, 2020. His retrospective takes place at The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2020, and Ryerson Image Center, Toronto, 2021. Gupta is a Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham, and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London, and was the Lead Curator for the Houston Fotofest in 2018. Gupta's work is in many private and public collections including, George Eastman House (Rochester, USA); Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan); Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA); Royal Ontario Museum (Canada); Tate (London, UK); Harvard University (Cambridge, USA); and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA).
