Comment | Sunil Gupta’s intimate photographs show how art and activism can work together

A survey of photographer Sunil Gupta opening this month at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge highlights how his work merges personal experience with activist commentary, including the 1999 series “From Here to Eternity.” The project consists of six photographic diptychs made after Gupta’s HIV-positive diagnosis four years earlier, pairing intimate self-portraits—often nude or during treatment—with daylight images of shuttered, locked urban sites associated with queer nightlife such as clubs and saunas. Gupta has said the images reflect an ambiguous limbo, including feelings of exclusion within LGBTQ spaces and the broader closure of such venues during that period; one pairing juxtaposes the gate of the club Fist with a billboard from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God asking, “If God exists, why doesn’t He help you?” The title also refers both to gratitude for each day after diagnosis and to the “eternity” of loss amid AIDS-related deaths in the gay community. The exhibition also traces earlier work such as “Friends and Lovers,” documenting Gupta’s life in Montreal after moving from India in the 1970s alongside scenes of queer community and rights protests.

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