Instagram Live: Sunil Gupta and Dal Chodha in Conversation

Join Aperture and Tenderbooks on Instagram for a lunchtime conversation between Sunil Gupta and Dal Chodha as part of Tenderbooks’s IGTV series, TenderChats—an ongoing series of thirty-minute musings on the magic and permanence of printed matter. The two will discuss Gupta’s new title, We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference (Aperture, 2022).

We Were Here offers an unparalleled firsthand account of the influential photographer and curator Sunil Gupta’s writing and critical inquiry since the 1970s. Newspaper articles, speeches, and essays show Gupta’s crucial role at the center of grassroots queer and postcolonial organizing throughout an artistic career lived between Canada, the UK, and India. 

Tune in at 1:00 p.m. BST @tenderbooks on Instagram.

This event is presented in partnership with Tenderbooks.

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Sunil Gupta (born in New Delhi, 1953) is a photographer, curator, writer, and activist. Gupta migrated to Canada at the age of fifteen. He was educated in photography at the New School, New York and the Royal College of Art, London. Over a career spanning more than four decades, Gupta has maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing bodies of work that are pioneering in their social and political commentary. The artist’s diasporic experience of multiple cultures informs a practice dedicated to themes of race, migration, and queer identity—his own lived experience a point of departure for photographic projects, born from a desire to see himself and others like him represented in art history. Gupta’s work has been exhibited internationally and published in numerous monographs and catalogues, including Christopher Street, 1976 (2018) and From Here to Eternity (2020). 

London-based writer Dal Chodha is editor in chief of Archivist Addendum, a publishing project that explores the gap between fashion editorial and academe. He contributes to various international titles including Modern Matter, AnOther and i-D, and is a contributing editor at Wallpaper*. A consultant to luxury brands, clients include Burberry, MARTIOTESTINO+, Kenzo, Paul Smith, Sunspel, BERTHOLD, Dusan, and Roker. He is a contributing editor to PATTERNITY: A New Way of Seeing (2015). Chodha has been working in academic institutions for more than a decade and is Stage One Leader of the BA Fashion Communication and Promotion course at Central Saint Martins, London. In 2020 he published his first book SHOW NOTES, which is an original hybrid of journalism, poetry, and provocation.

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Image: Sunil Gupta, Mr Malhotra’s Party, 2011; from We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference (Aperture, 2022). Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, London; Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto; and Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi.