At 25, photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya has already had his work shown at Art Basel, Miami, been written up in the New York Times and is signed with New York's Envoy Gallery, so trendy it left the galleries of Chelsea and moved down to The Lower East Side last year.
His portraits of friends and strangers who often come to his Brooklyn apartment and sit on his bed are intimate, sometimes voyeuristic, and -- though he claims it's not the point -- often very hot. They've been collected in his first book, Beloved Object & Amorous Subject, Revisited, which is having a release party tonight at The Cock in Manhattan.
Out.com: Have any guys hit on you or tried to hook up with you so they could get their picture taken?
Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Yes. I indulged on that one once. I think it's a bit creepy, no? I'm more interested in figuring out what the person wants. The thing is, I've never asked to take a friend or stranger's portrait so that I could sleep with him. I've of course slept with or dated people who've shown up in projects, but it's a result, not the means, if that makes sense. Some random people have sent me very un-cute naked pictures of themselves. I never know what to say.
The title of your book is a play on Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. What does a dead French semiotician have in common with portraits of gay hipster boys from Williamsburg?
Well, they're not all gay! Can you tell? Most not from Williamsburg, and the assumption that they're hipsters for the most part is, I suppose, inferred from a specific point perspective as a viewer. But I think that's interesting. I know you know a few of them, since we have overlapping groups of friends, but the rest really is filled in by your own experience.
And the dead semiotician?
The part of his Fragments that I was initially interested in was his obsessive way of quantifying every feeling, every emotional state, every way the subject [who acts] responds to the object. It is about looking, trying to make sense of all of these new people, reconnections, or new discoveries about people I thought I knew.
You're having your book release party at The Cock. It's not your usual art book release party venue.
Well, the only reason I ever went to the Cock is because BUTT would have parties there. Mostly because I hardly go into Manhattan for bars. I really love the guys who do the Wednesday SLURP party, Michael and Telfar, and they've been awesome in hosting my birthday parties the past few years. So yeah -- I go for my birthday and then magazine parties. Such a bad friend, that sounds so selfish!
Can you explain how you choose subjects? A lot of them are your friends, right?
I began with someone I'd had a brief fling with back in college. They continued through crushes, friends, and a few strangers who then became good friends. They were just chosen because at some point while I was making this project my relationship to them changed.
You say a major theme in your work is "the possibility to look again." What does that mean?
For every photograph you see there are two dozen others. My initial edit, I may come back to see months or years later, may no longer reflect my new understanding of that person at that point back in time.
The New York Times did a story about how there's a movement of New York young gay artists who openly approach gay male subject matter, including people like you, Slava Mogutin and Christopher Schulz. Do you see yourself as being a part of that movement? Is it a movement?
I like both of them and their work. Christopher is actually a friend who was in the show. Our images may have a lot of subject matter overlap but thematically it is all drastically different.
A lot of what's called "gay art" is erotic, but even though some of the guys who pose for you are nude, it seems more intimate. Is that deliberate?
Gay art -- that's not what I'm making. Queer art, yes. I'm looking at the dynamic between myself as artist: The people around me, how those relationships are often fluid and confusing, how sex gets caught up in things, and how my medium affects all of them. And all of it comes from a very queer perspective: Something that allows more questions and possibilities.
You were recently at Art Basel in Miami and your work is getting a lot of press attention. Has your life changed from when you started taking these portraits to now?
I'm not a fan of being young! Since I did that project and the couple that followed, there has been a lot of coverage in magazines and art blogs. I've been working with a gallery, Envoy, for about eight months now, and they generously published the book, which I think will help. But I keep on making new work and want to get that out there and beyond the narrow scope of what people are looking at now. There's a lot more that I'm doing that the "naked boys," that I think gives a fuller context to what my work is about. The weirdest part is that I don't like being in media. My work is fine, even self-portrait projects are fine. But I get nervous about reading myself in print, or having myself be the focus of attention rather than the work itself. But it goes hand in hand -- I have to get over it.
-- JAPHY GRANT
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