Paul Mpagi Sepuya reflects on his cerebral yet erotic photography

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s camera is pointed at you. For two decades, the California-based artist has been toying with the conventions of portraiture. He uses mirrors and illusion to centre the camera in his photos, which commonly feature himself, his friends, his lovers, his peers; often nude, often intimate. Through Sepuya’s lens, the link between the camera, the subject and viewer becomes uroboric, as he revels in exposing the precise nuts and bolts of his process.

Nottingham Contemporary have worked with Sepuya to host the first institutional presentation of his work on British soil. Titled Exposure, it draws together disparate works by the artist under the banner of identity and visibility. But Sepuya’s work deconstructs the hard and fast categorisations found in contemporary discourse, and his art is by no means didactic; it’s playful, warm, and erotic. 

Before he travelled to the UK, Sepuya spoke to Dazed from his home in Los Angeles about his fascination with the photography studio as a concept, being inspired by trans girls’ influence on the culture, and why he’s an artist, not a photographer. 

You once described yourself as an artist as opposed to a photographer. Do you still feel that distinction?

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Yeah. I’m an artist and I make photographs. I think it tends to be clarifying; for a long time, I had tried to be a ‘photographer’, meaning someone for hire. I will occasionally agree to do something but I will exclusively only make other images if they make sense with what I’m doing in my own work. It seems a little silly when I think, what’s with the opposition to [being labelled a photographer]? Maybe it just makes me feel old but I feel there’s a whole generation that’s not even calling themselves artists or photographers, it’s a ‘visual something or other’ or ‘narrative storyteller’ or ‘visual activist.’ I’m an artist, I make things to go on a wall. There’s a lot of thought and care and work that goes into making sure there’s depth and intelligence along with something that I hope is a pretty picture. I think I’m firmly an artist who makes things.

That’s something you see a lot, people trying to gussy up what they do to mean something greater. If you’re an artist, it’s okay to just be an artist. 

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Photography is often a supplement to a lot of other kinds of work and it might just need to illustrate something or make something visible, accompanied by text or media or interview. I’m interested in making photography firmly within an art context, however imperfect that might be.

Recently you’ve become focused on the photography studio itself – specifically in the series Daylight Studio / Dark Room Studio. A lot of photographers try to disguise or obscure their studio but you’re as interested in it as the people who sit for you. Where did that come from?

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: If you come into my studio, it’s not a very photography studio in a funny way. There aren’t strobes and clips and lots of equipment. It’s an artist’s studio in the way early photo studios weren’t much different from a painter’s studio. I moved studios in the building to a larger space and I had the opportunity to start over. I was looking at a lot of historical references and thinking about the objects in them and they were on a little board of things I was interested in. It was one of those Covid moments where I found that so much was on sale, so I started shopping and gathering things. I wasn’t making a historical recreation but I was thinking a lot about these early images and relating to the backdrops of these studios being very indicative of Western European colonialism. All the objects were potted palms or Persian rugs or Indonesian textiles, as backdrops for Western white people to sit. I was like, let’s just have fun with it and throw everything in, but it’s kind of on its way out now. 

“I’m an artist, I make things to go on a wall. There’s a lot of thought and care and work that goes into making sure there’s depth and intelligence along with something that I hope is a pretty picture” – Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Ideas around visibility, identity and representation are prevalent in your work and a lot of contemporary discourse focuses on these ideas but in a black-and-white way. Your work predates these discussions so I’m interested in how you feel about continuing to make art against this background?

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: I’ve never set out to make work where representation or visibility is the endpoint. It’s been interesting to see how the conversations have changed. It’s an ongoing learning process. All of the language that we have today wasn’t available when I was an undergrad. I’m just trying to be honest with where I’m coming from and not trying to inscribe identity on works, especially portraits of friends. For example, with an image of someone dear to me that I may have made five years ago, their gender or their name could have changed since then. People’s understanding of their identity changes – genders change, names change – and I’m not interested in photographs always being held in time, they should always be existing in the present. 

Because of your use of friends, lovers, and peers as subjects, do you view your work as collaborative or communal?

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Yeah. I think that’s distinct from when there are co-authored works, like with Guadalupe Rosales or Ariel Goldberg, where we’ve constructed an image together. But the making of images – everything that my work is dependent on – is a collaborative community. Suddenly I’m thinking, for example, what if you were the proprietor of a queer bar? You try to facilitate a space that is welcoming where people can come through, and that takes collaboration, but you’re still the caretaker of this space. 

Maybe my practice is more like hosting a dinner party. That also requires a certain set of community collaboration, dialogue, friendship and care, but it’s more carefully orchestrated. Rather than the doors always being open, I’ve only got room for maybe eight people at the table. Still, no one’s going to come to dinner if you’re not taking care of friendships and being a part of the community. Oftentimes people bring interesting conversation or a dish to share so sometimes that dinner party is a potluck. Sometimes you’re like, ‘I’m trying out this recipe’, and sometimes it’s ‘let’s just order in food’. Maybe that’s a good way to put it – like I’m hosting a dinner party. 

“I’ve never set out to make work where representation or visibility is the endpoint... I’m just trying to be honest with where I’m coming from and not trying to inscribe identity on works, especially portraits of friends” – Paul Mpagi Sepuya

It’s very Judy Chicago of you.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Yes, but hopefully people don’t need to be dead feminist icons to get their platter.

What culture – be it film, music, art – has inspired you lately?

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Right now, I would say it’s nightlife. In terms of culture, I think those types of queer spaces, where people come together under the guise of desiring to be in proximity to bodies. You have writers and art historians and artists and designers and theorists and they’re all bringing their amazing minds but the moment everyone meets, you just want to be sweaty together. That is a cultural space, to me. There’s also the amazing, very lived, very intellectual culture that I think the trans girls are bringing to everything. That kind of leadership that is coming from so many trans people is really leading us culturally. 

Part of the process of making portraiture is these moments of bringing everything into the present. That forces conversation and some of them have been about friends who have transitioned over the years. What does a portrait from the past mean? More recently, I had an ex-partner who transitioned while we were together and we maintained that friendship and relationship. I’ve learned so much through her about the definitions within one’s own subjectivity of gayness and queerness. Where does a gay male subjectivity reach its physical boundaries and have to contend with that? I’m wanting to acknowledge that the starting point for [my] work is coming from a very cis, gay, Black male identity, but it’s going to be in community with everyone who comes into that space. 

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s Exposure is running at Nottingham Contemporary from Jan 27 until May 5, 2024. 

Join Dazed Club and be part of our world! You get exclusive access to events, parties, festivals and our editors, as well as a free subscription to Dazed for a year. Join for £5/month today.