Cover image: Sunil Gupta, “Untitled #22”, from the series, “Christopher Street”, New York 1976, Silver gelatin print: 60.7 x 91.7 cm
Last November, international photographers Roshini Kempadoo and Sunil Gupta had a conversation about their work and how their careers and interests have continued to overlap after so many years.
Together they reflected on their shared history of working with independent photography as a critical practice, focusing on issues of race, migration and queer issues. They considered how their lives and work have changed and evolved in parallel to a shifting political landscape, from Thatcherism in the 1980s, to the role of identity in the art world today.
Sunil Gupta is Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham, and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He was an active participant during the ‘critical decade’ of black arts and culture in the late 1980s/1990s as a co-founder (1990) of Autograph ABP (The Association of Black Photographers), London, and a holder of one of the two founding curatorial franchises of INIVA in London. Gupta is an alumni of the CREAM doctoral programme, having been awarded his doctorate, “Queer Migrations” in 2018.
CREAM’s Roshini Kempadoo is Professor of Photography and Visual Culture, and a media artist and photographer. As a cultural activist she also contributed to establishing art institutions and debate during the ‘critical decade’ of black culture including working with Sunil at Autograph ABP and Ten.8 International Photographic Magazine. She creates photographs and multimedia artworks that interpret and re-imagine contemporary and historical experiences of the particular and the everyday. Her artwork and photographs are influenced by a long career of documenting Caribbean communities and individuals, addressing rights issues and inequalities. She is currently an academic member of the Stuart Hall Foundation.
This is a recording of their in person conversation as part of the Westminster Photography Forum held on Regent Street campus on Tuesday 17th November 2021. The conversation is followed by a live audience Q&A.