Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Artist
July 29, 2026
The artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya wields a variety of cameras to make his striking and distinctive portraits: film, digital, large-format, handheld. The cameras themselves often appear in his photos, which cleverly manipulate reflective surfaces; they may be perched on tripods beside his posed subjects, partially obscured by fragments of paper or fabric, or held by the artist himself. But, Sepuya said, “The camera is not part of the aesthetic.” His primary consideration is “what kind of picture needs to be made” and what tool he needs to make it.
Sepuya’s work, which explores themes such as queer desire, marginality, and the power dynamics of seeing and being seen, can be found in the collections of numerous major museums, including the Tate, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. “Paul Mpagi Sepuya – Focus. Desire.,” a traveling survey spanning more than two decades of the artist’s work, is on view at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany, until October 4. It includes Sepuya’s studio photography, self-portraits, and archival ephemera such as journal excerpts, sketches, and copies of the artist’s early-career self-published zine, SHOOT.
Here, Sepuya shared the tools essential to his art.
