Paul Mpagi Sepuya has consistently created photographs that seek to challenge the traditions of portrait photography. All Sepuya’s photographs created over the last several years were taken in his studio in Los Angeles, California. While he often photographs his friends, artists, collaborators and himself as part of his artistic practice, technically speaking all these pictures are also of the same subject: a large mirror in his studio. What is reflected in the mirror or attached to its surface constitutes the shifting imagery in the artist’s prolific and generous practice.

The playful interactions between Sepuya and his (mostly male) sitters, or between the artist and the mirror, scraps of test prints, drapery, and other objects in the studio, span the sexually suggestive, self-consciously performative, and the intimate. While Sepuya and his sitters often appear in the nude, the objectifying gaze so typical of historical representations of queer, raced, male bodies is notably absent here. There are cues in each portrait that suggest collaboration, friendship and agency. Desire and the pleasure of looking are mediated by the omnipresence of the mirror, which firmly roots the viewer of Sepuya’s photographs outside of the scene. The camera, also omnipresent, implies the consent of the subjects, who are active participants in the making of these images.

Another theme in Sepuya’s practice is an ongoing investigation of what constitutes a photographic image. Working in both digital and analogue media, Sepuya is a “straight” photographer in the sense that he does not digitally manipulate his images. All the layering and collage-like effects that appear in his pictures are created from real material in the studio and shot as a single exposure.

Exposure (_2100879), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2100889), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2100999), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2110004), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2110008), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2000930), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2000917), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2000921), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2000915), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago

Exposure (_2000877), 2017
Archival pigment print, 60.96 x 81.28 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and DOCUMENT Gallery, Chicago