Christopher Street

Christopher Street was a cruising ground before it was a symbol. New York’s gay men would congregate there, to meet and steal a few moments with one another, in the back of parked trucks, in warehouses left to rot, on jetties nobody was policing anymore. After Stonewall, men who had previously met in the shadows began gathering more openly, on stoops, in doorways and on the sidewalk in daylight, claiming the street as their own in the way straight couples could claim every other street in the city.

Sunil Gupta arrived at the end of something, in the years before AIDS had a name. He was studying under Lisette Model at the New School, and at weekends he brought a camera to Christopher Street. It was as much a way of meeting men as it was of making work.

Nearly a decade after the book’s original publication, Gupta stumbled upon long-forgotten colour images made alongside the now iconic black and whites. This revised edition brings those flashes of colour into the world of 1970s New York.

“I came to photography in the early 1970s. What was initially just a hobby quickly found a purpose in the fledgling gay liberation movement, documenting gay rights marches as well as the burgeoning gay scene. In retrospect these pictures have become both nostalgic and iconic for a very important moment in my personal history.” - Sunil Gupta

Born in New Delhi and now living in London, Sunil Gupta is an artist, writer and activist. He holds an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art and a PhD from the University of Westminster. His work has been shown in over 90 international solo and group exhibitions. In 2026, he was awarded an MBE for services to art and LGBTQ+ communities.

Christopher Street, 1976 was nominated for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award, the Lucie Photo Book Prize and the Rencontres d’Arles Book Award. It will be shown alongside other early work in Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970–Now, opening at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, in September 2026.