From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective

From Here to Eternity celebrates almost half a century of work produced by Sunil Gupta; on display are critically acclaimed series as well as never-before exhibited works.   Born in India and later moving to the US and the UK, Sunil has been highly influential in his use of photography to raise awareness on the issues of race, sexuality and migration since the 1970s.

The works (from sixteen series from different moments in his career) depict not only his own life but also homosexuality at pivotal points in time.  Memorials (1995) is a poignant series that commemorates the victims of homophobic hate crimes.  Sunil has continuously photographed his community throughout these defining moments, from a few years after the Stonewall Riots in the burgeoning gay scene of NYC, through the AIDS epidemic hitting LGBTQ+ communities, to times when policies criminalising homosexuality have been instated and removed.

After being diagnosed with HIV, Sunil produced a series of diptychs From Here to Eternity (1999). Portraits of himself contrast with images of closed gay clubs,  questioning the simultaneous inclusion and exclusion from the gay community caused by HIV/AIDS.

“I made these works partly in response to a period of illness brought on by the HIV. I thought that it might be time to think about how the virus affects my life. I ended up with these six diptychs. They were made in the darkroom as straight forward negative positive prints. Printing one’s work in the darkroom is still magical as opposed to the digital printing that has largely taken over. The process itself seemed therapeutic.” – Sunil Gupta

Sunil’s work is inherently socially engaged, and his activism and artwork are visibly intertwined. His experience of racism in the UK led him to create the series Reflections on the Black Experience (1995), the exhibition of which led to the formation of Autograph ABBP.

Although the section of the penal code criminalising homosexuality in India was only removed in 2018, Sunil’s series Exiles (1987) and The New Pre-Raphaelites (2008), demonstrate the changing attitudes toward homosexuality.  In Exiles the men photographed are primarily facing away from the lens and the captions state a fear of being found out. However, The New Pre-Raphaelites is a series of bright and colourful portraits which depict a new, and perhaps more liberated, generation.

It has been almost 50 years since Gupta’s first series of photographs depicting the growing queer community of Christopher Street (1976). Now, In Gupta’s most recent project – a collaboration with Helmut Lang – he photographs the Autumn/Winter collection for the major fashion designer back in the same setting of Christopher Street. This is emblematic not only of Gupta’s still growing success, from being a university drop-out in NYC, to photographing a major campaign, but also how the queer community has been discriminated against, and then, celebrated.

By Enez Nathie