One particularly gripping photograph shows
One particularly gripping photograph shows Sunil?s father?s belongings, money, identification, credit cards, that were removed from his body after his death. It took the authorities three days to notify the family, presumably because his father was assigned to the ?immigrant? section of the morgue. Nobody had bothered to check his identification and call his family, even though his father had all the necessary papers on him. And his social security card had been neatly cut in half.
Sunil Gupta?s second photo collection Homelands (2001 to 2003) includes large-scale diptychs that juxtapose images from his experience in the West with images from his home country in India. His exhibition explores highly personal topics, such as Gupta?s homosexuality and the fact that he is HIV positive. Gupta was diagnosed with HIV in 1995. For me the most powerful image of the collection includes Gupta in front of a mirror, stark naked, facing the camera, with a sliver of his mirror image showing right next to an image of India. My museum guide indicated that Sunil has actually commented that he lives right in that narrow line between East and West.
It seems that his cultural identity is tenuous at best and Sunil decided recently to move back to India to explore his own cultural background.
croydon taxi
