Ben Luke
speaker
1,919 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 1 Sep
Ben Luke’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
She convinced him to leave his business studies and take up the camera in earnest.
matched
He made one of his best-known series while there, Christopher Street from 1976, capturing anonymous men alone or in couples and groups as they walked along this street at the heart of Queer New York, in a kind of Hausian period between the Stonewall Uprising and the AIDS crisis.
matched
Here, Sunil's gaze through his camera became
matched
One of desire.
matched
He said that taking the Christopher Street images was his way of having everybody without having to stop and have sex with them.
matched
He left New York for the UK in late 1977, again following his then partner.
matched
He went on to study at the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham in Surrey, and then at the Royal College of Art in London.
matched
While he was studying, he returned to India for the first time as an adult and made series that.
matched
Developed themes he'd explored in Montreal and New York.
matched
Though homosexuality was illegal in early 1980s India, still Sunil found that gay men had a presence in Delhi and in towards an Indian gay image, he attempted to capture scenes of queer affection, often set in dramatic landscapes and vistas.
matched
In cruising 1960s Delhi, meanwhile, he sought to capture his teenage cruising grounds, again reflecting his consistent balance of subjectivity.
matched
And objectivity.
matched
These black and white series are a prelude to the later colour photography and text project Exiles, made between 1986 and 1987, which we discuss in the conversation.
matched
In the years between his visits to India in the 1980s, Sunil explored queer life in the UK amid the AIDS crisis and the hostile environment for LGBTQ people created by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.
matched
Lovers, 10 years old.
matched
From 1984 to 5 was a response to the breakup of the relationship that brought him to London.
matched
Sunil set about depicting gay couples, eventually more than 30, in what he called an effort to get to know what made them tick.
matched
Mostly pictures of his social circle in West London in apparent domestic bliss.
matched
The portraits came to have a different meaning, since many of the men depicted have since died of AIDS-related illnesses.
matched
Pretended family relationships from 1980.
matched
Showing 21–40 of 1,919 · page 2 of 96
← Previous
Next →