Sunil Gupta: Outtake, from the series Exiles, 1987

“It had always seemed to me that art history seemed to stop at Greece and never properly dealt with gay issues from another place. Therefore it became imperative to create some images of gay Indian men; they didn't seem to exist.”—Sunil Gupta

Aperture is pleased to release a special limited-edition photograph by Sunil Gupta on the occasion of the publication of We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography and Cultural Difference Selected Writings by Sunil Gupta (2022), an Aperture Ideas book, offering an unparalleled firsthand account of this influential photographer and curator’s writings and critical inquiry since the 1980's.

This special collaboration derived from the artist’s Exiles series started as a commission he was awarded in the early 1980’s which helped to make this project that visualized the experience of gay men in Delhi, the artist’s hometown. A photographer, curator, writer and activist, Gupta has maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing bodies of work that are pioneering in their social and political commentary. His diasporic experience of multiple cultures informs a practice dedicated to the themes of race, migration, and queer identity—and his life is a point of departure for photographic projects, born from a desire to see himself and others like him represented in art history.

Each limited-edition print is hand-packed with great care and ships from New York within 3–5 days.