9 October 2020 – 31 May 2021
The Photographer’s Gallery
Project description
From Here to Eternity is the first major retrospective of UK based photographer, Sunil Gupta (b. 1953, New Delhi India) and offers a complex and layered view of Gupta’s unique transcontinental photographic vision.
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
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. His work has been instrumental in raising awareness around the political realities concerning the fight for international gay rights and of making visible the tensions between tradition and modernity, public and private, the body and body politics.
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, Sunil Gupta has been inspirational to generations of photographic activists and LGBTQ+ rights campaigners.
Read the full Press Release here and get ticket info here.
The exhibition is curated by Mark Sealy (Autograph ABP, London) in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery (London) and the Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto).
A new publication will be published by the organising partners to accompany the exhibition. Designed by Fraser Muggeridge studio, it will focus on ephemera and map the encounters and events that chart Gupta’s political and personal journey.
Supported by the Bagri Foundation
Talks and Events programme supported by the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation
• Commission new work or present existing work made by contemporary artists which speaks to our mission
• Research, display and publish work which address the subjects of identity, representation, rights and justice
• Encourage the production of new knowledge and learning about this subject matter, both alone and through collaboration with other institutions.
