Gupta is an internationally renowned documentary photographer whose work explores issues of queer life, race, and migration. His family immigrated to Montreal when he was in high school. While he attended Dawson College and completed a degree in accounting at Concordia University, Gupta was an avid amateur photographer. He left for New York in 1976, studied photography with Lisette Model, and never returned to live in Canada. However, he has mined his snapshots of tumultuous Montreal in the 1970s for several important projects, including Social Security, 1988, which explored his family’s immigration experience, and Friends & Lovers: Coming Out in Montreal in the 1970s, 1970–75.

Image: Sunil Gupta, image from the series Social Security, 1988. © Sunil Gupta / DACS London / CARCC Ottawa 2023.

For further reading, see:

Dunster, Flora. “Do You Have Place? (Interview with Sunil Gupta).” Third Text 35, no. 1 (2021): 81–95.

Gupta, Sunil. Pictures from Here. London: Chris Boot, 2003.