SUNIL GUPTA
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    • Tate Photography: Sunil Gupta
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   Same Difference

Picture
‘Same Difference’ was the title of the first queer photography exhibition that I was involved with, both as exhibitor and as organiser, alongside Jean Fraser. It took place at Camerawork, London in 1986. We had both emerged from the time when photography education had just begun to embrace theory. The dominant discourse was “difference”. The difference, of course, was gender based which the two of us had applied to our respective queer experiences as lesbian and gay. However, it seemed inadequate to conceptualise same-sex desire so we called our project “Same Difference” to complicate the discourse. Because Camerawork was also a darkroom resource, we ran a parallel schools workshop with the blessing of the Inner London Education Authority. We selected exhibition work by photographers who openly identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual, but who didn’t necessarily share our theoretical bias. Some came directly from the larger queer community and were self-taught in the craft of photography. The gallery exhibition ran without problems, but the schools workshop got caught up in the preamble to Clause 28. This resulted in the cancellation the touring exhibition planned for schools comprising of teenage coming out storyboards from the workshop.
  • Home
  • Photography
    • Friends & Lovers: Coming Out in Montréal in the 1970s
    • Christopher Street, New York 1976
    • Cruising 1960s Delhi
    • London 1977
    • London 1982
    • Lovers: Ten Years On
    • Reflections of the Black Experience
    • Asians in Bradford
    • Exiles
    • Social Security
    • "Pretended" Family Relationships
    • Trespass 1
    • Trespass 2
    • Trespass 3
    • From Here to Eternity
    • The Body Positive
    • Love and Light
    • Imagining Childhood
    • Homelands
    • Tales of a City: Delhi
    • Country: Portrait of an Indian Village
    • Mr Malhotra's Party
    • Anonymous Self Portraits
    • Love, Undetectable
    • Women in Love
    • The New Pre-Raphaelites
    • Sun City
    • Stockwell
    • Helmut Lang Christopher Street
    • Dissent and Desire
    • Songs of Deliverance — Part I
    • Songs of Deliverance — Part II
    • Arrival
  • Books
    • An Economy of Signs
    • Disrupted Borders
    • Ecstatic Antibodies
    • Trespass 1
    • Sunil Gupta Monograph
    • Pictures From Here
    • Wish You Were Here
    • Queer
    • Delhi: Communities of Belonging
    • Christopher Street
    • Lovers: Ten Years On
    • London 1982
    • From Here To Eternity
    • We Were Here : Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference
    • Come Out
    • Tessa Boffin Ed. Sunil Gupta
    • Tate Photography: Sunil Gupta
  • Shop
    • Limited Edition Prints
    • Books For Sale
  • Video
  • Curating
    • Stevie Bezencenet
    • Joy Gregory
    • Same Difference
    • The New Republics
    • Simryn Gill
    • Divine Facades
    • Fernando Arias
  • Newsletters
    • 2025
    • 2024 Archive
    • 2023 Archive
  • Columns
    • A Return from Exile
    • Relative Values
    • The End of Marriage
    • A Laying on of Hands
    • City of Dreams
    • Oral History
    • Pride and Prejudice
  • Press
  • About
  • Contact