Love Stories
19 December 2026 - 30 May 2027Our new Universal Ticket allows access to our entire gallery. This ticket operates on a ‘Pay If and What You Can’ basis. Upon arrival, please go to gallery reception where our universal ticket is available. No pre-booking necessary. If you would like to make a Group Booking or have additional access needs, please contact us on scva@uea.ac.uk or 01603 593199
Love Stories explores love as it shapes our everyday lives. Bringing together the work of ten internationally acclaimed photographers, the exhibition moves beyond traditional romantic narratives to reveal intimate stories of friendship, family, partnership, community and selfhood, capturing the complex mix of mundane, humorous, painful, and joyful emotions at the heart of human relationships.
Works on show range from Richard Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh series documenting the lives of his parents, Ray and Liz, in their flat in England’s Black Country, to Martin Parr’s sardonic Bored Couples, exploring how individual assumptions and context influence how we interpret photographs. Shown for the first time in the UK, Akihito Yoshida’s tender series The Dialogue of Two and The Absence of Two documents the relationship between his grandmother and her grandson, the photographer’s cousin, Daiki. A series of striking self-portraits in Somnyama Ngonyama by Zanele Muholi reclaim Black identity, while Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh’s Lovers Revisited presents an intergenerational dialogue celebrating queer love and visibility. The exhibition also includes work by, Masahisa Fukase, Ollie Adegbayo, Isabel Okoro and Carol Allen-Storey.
Love Stories is curated by Tafadzwa Makwabarara, Curator of Cultural Empowerment at the Sainsbury Centre.
Love Stories is part of the Sainsbury Centre’s How Do We Find Love? exhibition season.
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Ollie Adegboye, Theo Collard-Peters, London 2022. Copyright and courtesy of the artist