The Photograph

There is a new book out, a collection of writings by queer British South Asian photographer Sunil Gupta, mostly collections of his essays from the mid — 80’s until the early 2000’s where he theorizes about England’s Black Arts Movement, queer photography, desire, the role of funding in movement building. It’s a lovely book for me to read. I was not in London during the Black Arts movement and this is as close as I’ll get.

Through this book I’ve been introduced to a photographer, Joy Gregory, who I’ve never heard of before and to whom I immediately declare my love. Gupta writes an essay about her work in the 1990’s, noting how she straddles multiple cultural lines, making work that is of Blackness but not about it, perhaps from it, but does not point to it. She apparently had some struggle, branded as too white by some folks, too Black by others. Respected immensely for her visual mastery yet not quite legible enough for anyone to claim her as their own.

I don’t know much about her. I am only at the beginning of my journey of understanding. I look forward to learning and learning. She had just the one retrospective in 2010 at Impressions Gallery in London. Its title: Lost Languages and other voices. Fourteen pieces from a twenty-year career. She continues to make work. She’s had a solo show seemingly every year. Her Instagram is private and has fewer than 2000 followers. Her present work is masterful in that way that past masters are when it seems like they have interrogated so deeply that nothing remains but the object.