Sunil Gupta — À propos — Slash Paris

Writer, artist and photographer of Indian origin living in London and New York, Sunil Gupta deploys a militant work that explores the themes of exile, sexuality and identity by seeking to respond to the injustices suffered by members of minorities.

Born in New Delhi, India in 1953, he emigrated with his family as a teenager to Canada where he studied commerce and then followed an artistic training in the United States and then in London where he notably obtained a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Art by specializing in photography. Committed from his youth to associations for the defense of homosexual rights, his work immediately embraces the question of the representation of individuals relegated to the banishment of society. Through unfiltered urban photography, he has been documenting their daily lives since the mid-1970s and will also turn in the 2000s to directing work that gives pride of place to a more narrative logic.

Known as one of the founding members of the Association of Black Photographers (Autograph ABP), he moved to London in the 1980s where he exhibited and organized exhibitions himself, endeavoring to promote openly homosexual artists, instilling in conservative society hence a complexity assumed without being limited to carrying only concordant voices. Likewise, he will also be at the helm of study and creation workshops.

Gupta’s work is presented in museums and galleries around the world and is included in numerous collections, notably those of the Tate in London but also the Museum of Modern Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the author of numerous books, including Queer: A Photographic Essay, Christopher Street 1976, We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference, 2022 or London 1982.

Recipient of the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bristol, he is represented around the world by the Hales Gallery, New York & London, Materia Gallery, Rome, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, ​Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.

Guillaume Benoit for Slash-Paris