Ian & Pavlik, London
- Artist: Sunil Gupta
- Date: 1984, printed 2018
- Medium: Photograph, inkjet print on paper
- Dimensions: image: 500 x 330 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the “Ian & Pavlik, London” by Sunil Gupta. It’s a black‑and‑white photograph, an inkjet print on paper, captured in 1984 and re‑printed in 2018. Gupta created it as part of his series “Lovers: Ten Years On,” which ran from 1984 to 1986. The series documents gay couples he met in his London and Newcastle social circles, showing them in domestic interiors in affectionate poses that echo traditional family portraits.
The image shows Ian and Pavlik sitting close together, eyes fixed on the camera, surrounded by the quiet details of a home—books, a window, a pet in the frame. Their posture feels ordinary, almost mundane, a deliberate counter‑point to the media’s sensationalized, deviant portrayals of gay relationships during the early AIDS crisis.
Gupta himself had just ended a ten‑year partnership, and he used the series as a social inquiry into the changing perceptions of queer love. Many of the couples featured would later lose their lives to HIV and AIDS. The series has only been shown in its entirety once, in 1984 at Five Dials Gallery, and its images are now an important visual record of a community fighting for visibility in a hostile era.
See it in person
Ian & Pavlik, London is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
