Childhood in India

Sunil Gupta was born on September 8, 1953 in New Delhi, India. His father was from a socially respectable North Indian Hindu background. However, his mother, a Tibetan raised by Anglican missionaries, was casteless.

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In reminiscences about his childhood, Gupta has emphasized the importance of the numerous relatives, friends, and associates who provided a cohesive and supportive social network for his family. Although he grew up in the densely packed urban environment of New Delhi, he had opportunities to visit rural areas, where members of his extended family lived.

His family did not have a television, but he enjoyed seeing American motion pictures, which impressed him with their colors and strong story lines. Movies not only provided his introduction to film, but they also ultimately influenced many aspects of his mature work, including his organization of images in extended series and his use of text and other devices to suggest possible narratives.

Although Gupta migrated from India while still a teenager, aspects of its rich cultural heritage impacted his later art. For instance, his representation of the male body without idealization accords with artistic traditions in India, where the human figure is seldom physically heroicized. Furthermore, his interest in bringing together very diverse, and even opposed, images from a wide range of sources might be correlated with the (often unharmonious) blending of very different cultural traditions in modern India, which Gupta has described as "a very big country overlaid with many histories and many cultures . . . a minefield of contradictions."

Migration to Canada

In 1969, Gupta moved with his parents and sister to Montreal. Although his parents expected that the move would benefit the family economically and socially, it had many unforeseen negative consequences, especially for his father, whose health declined as a result of his work as a night porter at a club. Utilizing photos from family albums, recordings of telephone conversations with his mother, and other materials, Gupta later articulated the difficult experiences of his immigrant family in Social Security (1988), commissioned by Canada House, London.

Gupta's nuclear family lived largely in isolation in the center of Montreal, which did not have many South Asian residents at the time. Both Sunil and his sister, Shalini, ultimately made life choices that were not acceptable according to the conventions then prevailing in the Indian middle class. Thus, Gupta's parents opposed his decision to become a photographer, and they never openly acknowledged his homosexuality.

After completing high school in Montreal in 1970, Gupta continued his studies at Dawson College, Montreal, from 1970 until 1972. He became a Canadian citizen in 1972.

Initially planning to fulfill his parents' expectations that he would undertake a business career, Gupta studied for an advanced degree in accountancy at Concordia University from 1972 until 1977, but his real enthusiasm was for film.

New York, 1976

In Montreal, Gupta had developed his interest in film by frequenting art cinemas and by teaching himself how to take photographs on an amateur basis. In 1976, he resolved to improve his understanding of photography through several months of study at The New School for Social Research in New York City. Among his teachers, he was particularly influenced by Lisette Model, who recognized his talent and encouraged him to make photography his profession.

While in New York, he also was inspired by the Gay Liberation movement, then in full swing, and he resolved to come out and be active in the movement.

Celebrating his proud acknowledgment of his sexual orientation, Gupta made an extended series of photographs of gay men hanging out in the vicinity of Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Although not exhibited until recently, the photographs constitute a significant record of gay life in New York during the mid-1970s, and they also provide an early demonstration of Gupta's commitment to depicting gay life with honesty and dignity.

Imitating Lisette Model's practice, Gupta avoided contrived poses in the Christopher Street series and portrayed his subjects in a direct, straightforward way. Reflecting the confident mood of gay culture at that moment, many of the men look directly at Gupta's camera. Although the subjects are predominantly white, they differ significantly in age, social class, and physical attributes. In accord with photo conventions of the era, Gupta utilized black and white to emphasize the documentary realism of the images.