Photographer Sunil Gupta, who has documented queer life since the 1970s across India, Canada, the US and the UK, reflects on five decades of work ahead of a retrospective at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge. His photography has explored intimacy, public and clandestine spaces, and the political forces shaping queer identity, sometimes at real personal risk – one of his exhibitions in India was shut down by the government, while early UK work with photographer Tessa Boffin provoked hostile reactions from curators.

The article walks through ten landmark images spanning Gupta's career, including street photography of gay men on Christopher Street in New York, early "headless" portraits taken in Delhi in 1982 when homosexuality could not be openly discussed, and a series responding to Section 28, Thatcher's 1988 law banning the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools and by local authorities. Other works include digital montages made on early Apple computers exploring debates over European integration in 1992, and photographs from his return to India in 2005, when he met a subject in Leh who became a significant figure in his later work.