Sunil Gupta

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.

Sunil Gupta studied at The New School. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are London. Work by Sunil Gupta is recorded in the collections of George Eastman Museum, Tate, National Gallery of Canada and Museum of Modern Art.

• Born — 1953 • Birthplace — New Delhi, India • Education — * Concordia University (BCom) • The New School for Social Research • West Surrey College of Art and Design • Royal College of Art (MA) • University of Westminster (PhD) • Awards — MBE (2026)

Sunil Gupta was born in New Delhi, India, in 1953. He attended St. Columba's High School in New Delhi until 1969. In 1969, Gupta migrated to Montreal, Canada, with his family. There, he attended High School of Montreal until 1970. 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. Whilst there, he embraced his sexuality for the first time. He joined a campus gay liberation movement group and took photographs for its newspaper. In 1976, Gupta studied photography under Philip Halsman and Lisette Model at The New School for Social Research, New York City. 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).

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

In 1983, Gupta moved to London. In 1988, Gupta was one of the founders of the Association of Black Photographers (now Autograph ABP) in London. In 2019, he served on the jury that chose Susan Meiselas for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. From 2020-2021, Gupta held the exhibition From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective at the Photographer's Gallery in London. 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.

Gupta is married to Charan Singh, also a photographer. They live in Camberwell, south London. Gupta was diagnosed with HIV in 1995.

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

• Ecstatic Antibodies, Impressions Gallery, York, 1990; and toured to Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, 1990/1991; and elsewhere.

• Pictures From Here. 2003.. • Wish you Were Here: Memories of a gay life. New Delhi: Yoda, 2008.. • Queer. Prestel, 2011.. • Christopher Street 1976. London: Stanley/Barker, 2018.. • Lovers: Ten Years On. London: Stanley/Barker, 2020.. • London '82. London: Stanley/Barker, 2021..

• Delhi: Communities of Belonging. With Charan Singh. New Press, 2016..

• 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.. Photographs and text. • Disrupted Borders: an intervention in definitions of boundaries. London: Arts Council England; Rivers Oram, 1993.