Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Dark Room A–Z, A Conversation on Photographing Connection

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: So much has changed since then. There is a straightforwardness to making pictures that perhaps has remained important. But, I don’t think there’s a consistent aesthetic throughout when you look at it all together, from early 2000s portraits followed by abstractions and text, early studio works, the prints of scanned working material, bound books of ephemera and notations, and then return to the studio. 

And even in the past ten years of the “return to studio,” I’ve been interested to see how the aesthetic of projects change over time in ways that I cannot have planned.

KDH: I know that community is a big part of your practice and that many friends and colleagues appear in your photographs, in this case Dark Room series (2016–21), as featured in your new monograph. Can you talk about what it means to photograph someone you know versus a complete stranger? What is it like when you insert your own body into that frame? 

PMS: I stopped looking for sitters, models, strangers by early 2005, I think. Occasionally, I make photographs with someone I’m just getting to know, or there’s the editorial assignment where the subject of the pictures is a stranger, but some kind of notable or professionally recognized person. I’m not interested, for the most part, in pictures of people I don’t know, and I’m not interested in making pictures with them. I always say there has to be a mutual interest in the photographs and the connection, friendship, and conversation. 

When I began making portraits of friends exclusively, I immediately realized that I needed to be included as a subject of my own pictures, and as a companion in conversation or sitting alongside many of the portraits of my friends. I have to be present or vulnerable or visible in the same way that I ask of my friends, and they generously and wonderfully share with me. 

KDH: The new publication is so well designed and is organized alphabetically as the title foreshadows, from A-Z. With topics and subjects ranging from Accumulation to Zenaido Zamora, how did this form of investigation come to fruition?

PMS: I knew the book needed to be an alphabetical index. It is an artist book in the form of an index. Within that, for subjects or topics, the related images are in chronological order. The book needed to give an overview of topics in a somewhat strict organizational manner, because within that, everything is subjective, personal, interconnected, and interwoven. 

Initially trying to connect 15 years of work, we realized that it needed to be stricter. When I moved studios in the spring of 2021, I realized then that the book content and timeline would be bracketed by the DARK ROOM project, which was made during the time in 2016-2021 when I was in Studio 17. In this way, my 2012 self-published book, STUDIO WORK, was a model, encompassing a loose chronology of my residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 2010-11. 

For this book, I worked with an amazing editor, Leslie Martin, who really trusted and challenged me on the project. Ideas for this began in 2018, and in 2020, I began the design brainstorm with Silas Munro and his design partners at Polymode, and we worked closely on the incredibly complicated design process that took four years to complete. 

It was a design-in-the-moment kind of workflow. I didn’t know if the idea would work until I could see it fully drafted. And, much of the content couldn’t be completed until a design was drafted. It’s hard to explain and was the most difficult process I’ve ever worked through… Also the most rewarding.

KDH: The camera is nearly ubiquitous in your photographs. There is a relationship between the viewer, the sitters, yourself (or whoever is taking the photo), the lens, and the mirror. Some might say, there are many eyes, many orifices. Can you talk about how you arrived at allowing what is normally hidden to be evident? 

PMS: Photographing reflection, when perpendicular to the surface of the mirror, makes everything visible. If you don’t retouch and alter, or set up something to produce a “trick,” an honest picture will be evident, even if initially confusing. They may need time for viewers to understand at first. So, yes, when I began in 2014 to use the mirrors, I had two choices: to stay in the frame while pressing the shutter, or set the camera on a timer or remote shutter and walk away. 

Then with regards to trace and touch, I began to notice that when catching the reflection of black or dark material or objects, the usually almost-invisible or even visually obliterated accumulation on the mirror surface was thrown into stark relief. Extending this idea that latency requires blackness to become legible opened up a whole new conceptual way to tie everything together. 

KDH: In the same way a painter meticulously controls many of their brushstrokes, your work has an element of both abandon, but also control. With their sharp contrast of chiaroscuro, I feel like your compositions are tightly planned and lit. What can you share about your process and relationship to painting, if any? 

PMS: There is no planning of compositions, and all of the light is skylight, with a bit coming from overhead lights in my studio. There is only setting up conditions and then pressing play.

KDH: Your work is unabashedly queer and also intimate. What does intimacy mean to you? 

PMS: Intimacy is that thing that viewers of the photographs will never have access to; it’s only there for those in the moment and carried on in friendship, flirtation, or relationships between us.

KDH: Your work reframes the gaze and this book really solidifies your vision and legacy. Congratulations! 

PMS: Thank you!

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Dark Room A–Z is published by Aperture and is available at aperture.org/books.