About the edition 

This new and exclusive limited edition print has been commissioned for Studio Voltaire's Frieze New York's Viewing Room presentation.

Sunil Gupta’s 'Pre-Raphaelites' series deals with the ‘truths’ of posturing gay couples, single men and women, and families posing romantically between the cutting edge of desire and passion. An unwieldy combination of symbolism and realism, the photographs are filled with the intense luminosity of mythology while concentrating on models (real people) who occupy the spaces of criminal intent within the lines of section 377. The Pre-Raphaelites stood for a reformation of art, for attention to near-photographic detail and colour, the brilliance of which was meant to wipe out the “unstable areas of muddy darkness” that characterised the hypocrisy of the classical Victorian pose. The Brotherhood spoke out against the frivolous pomp of the 18th century, and meant to bring the arts back to sharply focused observation of the “truths of nature”.

The edition directly supports Studio Voltaire's exhibition, learning and studio programmes. 

About the Artist

Sunil Gupta has been using photography as a critical practice since the 1970s.  Subversive, impulsive, personal and political, Sunil Gupta's socially engaged projects have focused on such issues as family, race, migration and the complexities and taboos of sexuality and homosexual life. His work has been instrumental in raising awareness around the political realities concerning the fight for international gay rights and of making visible the tensions between tradition and modernity, public and private, the body and body politics. 

Gupta (lives and works in London) was born in New Delhi, India, relocated to Montreal, Canada, before studying at the Royal College of Art in London. His practice is currently subject of a retrospective at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2020/21) and will tour to Ryerson Image Center, Toronto (2021).  His work has been included in many important group shows including “Paris, Bombay, Delhi…” at the Pompidou Centre, Paris 2011 and “Masculinities” at Barbican, London 2020.

He is a Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham, Visiting Lecturer at Kingston University and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He was Lead Curator for the Houston Fotofest 2018. His work is in many private and public collections including; George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate, Harvard University and the Museum of Modern Art. His work is represented by Hales Gallery (New York, London), Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto) and Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi).
Gupta’s published work includes the monographs: Queer: Sunil Gupta (Prestel/Vadehra Art Gallery, 2011), Wish You Were Here: Memories of a Gay Life (Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2008), and Pictures From Here (Chris Boot Ltd., New York, 2003).  He exhibited (with Charan Singh), “Dissent and Desire” (catalogue) is at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston 2018 which was accompanied by the book, Delhi: Communities of Belonging, The New Press, New York 2016. His last publication was Christopher Street, Stanley Barker 2018 and his recent publications are Lovers: Ten Years On, Stanley Barker 2020 and Sunil Gupta: From Here to Eternity, Autograph 2020.