Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now

Sunil Gupta, Untitled #22 from Christopher Street (1976). Image courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Materià Gallery, SepiaEye, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery. © Sunil Gupta. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025.

A major survey exhibition revealing Sunil Gupta’s pioneering contribution to photography over five decades opens at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, on 19 September 2026. Intimate, subversive and often beautiful, Gupta’s work has been instrumental in raising awareness around the fight for queer rights internationally, particularly in India and the UK, laying bare the tensions between tradition and modernity, and public and private spheres. Life with a Camera features more than 130 works, spanning street photography, portraits, and commissioned and personal projects, reflecting a life of migrations between Delhi, Montreal, New York and his longstanding home in London.

Gupta’s love for family, friends and partners, and his belief that everyone has the right to lead full and joyful lives – in which identity and sexuality can be celebrated without fear – shines throughout his work. Highlight series will include Friends and Lovers (1970s), documenting Gupta’s social life as a young man in Montreal; Christopher Street (1976), capturing New York’s queer community after the Stonewall riots; Mr Malhotra’s Party (2007-2012), which covers a period of intense lobbying to change anti-gay laws in India; and Dissent and Desire (with Charan Singh, 2015), a series chronicling contemporary LGBTQ+ life in Delhi. 

An exciting programme of events accompany the exhibition, including In Conversations with the artist. The exhibition closes on 31 January 2027.