Abstract

Sunil Gupta’s practice as a photographer has spanned generations, continents, and cities. Throughout, he has grappled with the question ‘what does it mean to be an Indian queer man?’ Gupta’s approach to photography reveals a perspective embedded in the postcolonial sites of Montreal and Delhi, and shaped by his artistic education in London. The use of staged documentary – which belies Gupta’s role as a key player in British photo theory – has worked to bring feeling and experience into representation, creating a photographic basis for identification as gay and/or queer Indian. Based on a conversation at the 2019 conference ‘Cruising the Seventies: Imagining Queer Europe then and now’, this article draws from Gupta’s testimony to map the ways in which his photographs answer to his question. It proposes that Gupta’s work challenges a Eurocentric visual vocabulary, and can offer tools for imagining how ‘queer Europe’ might be displaced and refigured.

摘要

苏尼尔·古普塔（Sunil Gupta）的摄影生涯遍及几代人，大洲和城市。在整个过程中，他一直在努力思考“成为印度酷儿男人意味着什么？”这一问题。古普塔的摄影方法揭示了嵌入蒙特利尔和德里的后殖民地的景象，并受到他在伦敦的艺术教育的影响。分阶段的纪录片的使用（掩盖了古普塔在英国摄影理论中的主要角色）掩盖了人们的感受和经验，为识别同性恋和同性恋者打下了摄影基础。本文基于2019年会议的主题为``游荡七十年代：想像当时和现在的欧洲''，本文取材自古普塔的证词，描绘了古普塔的照片回答他的问题的方式。