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My photographic series 'Pretended' Family Relationships 1988 came into being through a variety of means over a short period of time. It was made in the late 1980s when I was living in Brixton. At the time, I was heavily involved in setting up Autograph, the association of Black photographers, and was also researching a big show called Ecstatic Antibodies about artistic responses to AIDS, as well as a survey of South Asian photography in Britain for Leeds City Art Gallery. It was a time of intense activity around things I really cared about.

At first, I just sent out invitations to make colour portraits of interracial couples, as that reflected my own situation. My partner, Steve Dodd, was away most of the time, having enrolled on a full-time PhD in Japanese literature at Columbia University in New York. It was before the internet, so we used to write letters to each other. Steve, being of literary bent, began to insert poems into his letters to me. These were in a short-form Japanese style that he was interested in exploring anyway. Very soon, they began to address our relationship directly. I found them very intriguing – and sometimes quite startling – as they said things like: ‘I call you my love though you are not my love…’

I decided to add the poems to my pictures. Originally, I had a very modernist perspective in which the photograph is idealised as a single frame, printed from edge to edge. However, I had started to experiment with image and text, guided by the idea that the text should be as legible as the pictures, not a tiny caption. I asked my friend, the graphic designer Eugenie Dodd, for her help. She laid out the poems then blew them up on photocopiers, and I proposed to show these texts adjacent to the colour portraits of the couples.

Then, in May 1988, Section 28 was passed and I began to attend and photograph the demonstrations to protest this virulent homophobic law introduced by our government. The new legislation forbade local authorities from promoting ‘the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’, putting into law the idea that same-sex couples could not constitute a legitimate family unit. My title, ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships, arose from this statement and called it into question.

Soon, I embarked on the idea of extending the use of collage in the series. I thought, ‘Why not add negatives from the demonstration pictures?’ So that’s how the works in the series were shown for the first time at Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago. The show was called Partners in Crime and featured my work alongside that of my American counterparts Doug Ischar, Kaucyila Brooke and Hinda Schuman. Looking back, perhaps this work has suddenly become more visible because we are, once again, living in such polarised times.

^{Six works from Sunil Gupta’s ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships are included in The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, until 5 May.}

^{Sunil Gupta is a photographer who lives and works in London. I call you my love, a book of letters exchanged between Gupta and Steve Dodd, presented alongside the series ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships, is published by Baron in April.}

^{Supported by Tate International Council and Tate Patrons. Curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, former Senior Curator of International Art (Photography), ºÚÁÏÉç, Helen Little, Curator, British Art, Tate Britain and Jasmine Chohan, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain with additional curatorial support from Bilal Akkouche, Assistant Curator, International Art, ºÚÁÏÉç, Sade Sarumi, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain and Bethany Husband, Exhibitions Assistant, Tate Britain.}