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A new Mapplethorpe? The queer zine legend reinventing the nude

Paul Mpagi Sepuya started out taking shots of his friends naked. His work, in which sitters often face away, has now earned comparisons with Robert Mapplethorpe – and even Caravaggio

In the autumn of 2001, Paul Mpagi Sepuya was an art student living in downtown New York. He’d just started his second year of university after moving from California when 9/11 changed life in the city for good. In March this year, the Covid-19 outbreak triggered another seismic change for the photographer: his newly opened exhibition in Los Angeles was forced to close a month before a major book collating his work was released. For Sepuya, this time is harder.

“It seems much worse, in some ways, than September 11,” he says. “I was living downtown, maybe a mile from it, watching the whole thing happen. You didn’t know what was coming next.”

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2VFZOdj
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