A new survey of work by artist Sunil Gupta at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, titled “Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970-Now,” opened this month and runs through January 31, 2027. The exhibition features his 1999 series, From Here to Eternity, which reflects his personal experience following an HIV positive diagnosis four years earlier.
The series consists of six photographic diptychs, often showing Gupta in states of reflection and isolation, sometimes undergoing treatment. These self-portraits are paired with close-up images of empty urban scenes: closed shutters, locked doors, and bolted gates. These nocturnal queer clubs and saunas are depicted dormant in daylight.
Gupta has described the images as ambiguous, capturing the limbo he experienced at the time. He noted that the rise of gay sex clubs coincided with his inability to visit them due to his illness, alongside thoughts of his own mortality. He posed the question in From Here to Eternity, “are these sex clubs and their patrons shutting me on the inside for good, or on the outside for good?” He felt unwelcome in LGBTQ circles as a person with HIV.
Beyond personal reflections, the photographs also address a broader social is...