Sunil Gupta is a pioneering photographer, writer, curator and activist at the helm of identity politics and queer studies with post-modernist, post-colonial lenses arming his inquiries into global cultures. Come Out features a series of never-before-exhibited photographs shot in London from 1985 to 1995, when the Pride movement as a cultural phenomenon was yet to take ideological and performative shape in cultural imaginations around the world, especially in England. These photographs divulge the oppressive systemic apparatuses within which intersectional sub-cultures were overpowered and rendered invisible in the throes of mainstream society in London in the eighties and nineties. In response to these denigrations of freedom, the queer community frequently erupted in waves of peaceful demonstrations, often joining other causes and movements that were gaining stead in opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s reigning ministry. Gupta once again approaches the public field as a site where diverse individuals come together to posit their self-actualized identities, therein celebrating an expansion in the visibility of gay life in London. In many ways Come Out reveals the origin story of Pride movements: before there was Pride, there was first protest.
Voices from “Dissent and Desire” Ó Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh (2018)
