Sunil Gupta (b. 1953, New Delhi, India) is a photographer, artist, educator, and curator whose career spans over four decades and bridges autobiography with social engagement. After moving to Canada as a teenager in the late 1960s, he studied Commerce at Concordia University, Montreal, before turning to photography in 1976 at the New School for Social Research in New York. He later earned a Diploma from West Surrey College of Art & Design (1981), an MA from the Royal College of Art, London (1983), and a PhD from the University of Westminster (2019) with a thesis titled Queer Migrations. 

 Gupta’s work explores themes of queer identity, migration, and race, using photography as a means of social critique and self-representation. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has maintained a visionary approach to the medium, creating pioneering bodies of work that challenges dominant narratives and expands the representation of marginalized identities. His early series Christopher Street (1976) documents the gay liberation movement in Manhattan, serving both as an artistic debut and a personal act of coming out. With Exiles (1986-1987), commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery, he returned to India to photograph gay men against urban backdrops, pairing portraits with personal testimonies—an audacious gesture at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in India. 

 Other key works, such as Lovers: Ten Years On (1984-1985), portray queer and interracial couples in Britain, addressing love, intimacy, and desire during an era of social conservatism. After being diagnosed with HIV in the mid-1990s, Gupta’s work took on a more introspective tone. In From Here to Eternity (1999), he mapped his medical and emotional journey across South London, embracing the tactile, transformative qualities of analogue photography. 

 Between 2004 and 2012, while based in India, Gupta produced Mr Malhotra’s Party, updating the Exiles project by capturing a younger, more openly queer generation. Despite persistent stigma and legal repression, these portraits convey defiance and resilience, reflecting new modes of community formation through digital and social networks. 

 In recent years, Gupta’s research has focused on queer migration in Canada, framing identity as an ongoing process of arrival and belonging. His photographs are held in major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi). 

 Gupta has published numerous books—among them We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference (2022), Christopher Street (2018), and Delhi: Communities of Belonging (2016)—and co-founded Autograph – The Association of Black Photographers in 1989. His continued relevance is underscored by his inclusion in Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (Barbican, 2020) and his touring retrospective From Here to Eternity, organized by The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2020), and The Image Centre, Toronto (2022), and Sunil Gupta: Life With A Camera, 1970—Now at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2026). 

 He is represented by Hales Gallery (New York, London), Matèria (Rome), Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto), and Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi). 

 He currently lives and works in London. He is a Professorial Fellow in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. 

 In 2026 he was awarded an MBE for Services to Art and to the LGBTQ+ Communities in the King’s Birthday Honours list.

Selected works