Queer

Photographs: Sunil Gupta
Edited by Vidya Shivadas with text by Keith Wallace and interview with Saleem Kidwai
Publisher: Vadehra Art Gallery, India and Prestel, USA
140 pages
With illustrations throughout
Year: 2011
ISBN: 9783791350998
Price: $60
Hardcover with dust jacket, 11.3 x 9.8 in

The first monograph on this important Indian photographer features selections from each of his major series, offering a comprehensive overview of Sunil Gupta's work to date. Arguably India's best-known working photographer, Gupta is also a well-known artist, curator, and writer. For decades he has explored narratives of contemporary gay life in India and other parts of the world; tackled issues of gender and sexuality; and documented his own experiences living with AIDS. This volume chronicles Gupta's divergent series, which range from narrative portraits to fictional photo essays. Beautifully reproduced, these photos include his renowned series "The Pre-Raphaelites"; heart-rending images of children living in an HIV-positive care centre; 1970s street scenes from New York City's West Village; and his groundbreaking portraits of gay men, women, and transgender individuals living in his native country and struggling against homophobic laws and culture. Subversive, whimsical, personal, and political, Sunil Gupta's photographs have done much to raise awareness about and overcome the taboos of homosexual life throughout the modern world.