
Darkroom Mirror Study (_1990750)
2016
Darkroom Mirror Study (_1990750) places the viewer inside an act of looking that refuses to resolve cleanly. Sepuya works within the photographic darkroom not as a backdrop but as a conceptual subject in its own right, using mirrors, partial reflections, and the camera's own presence to fold the studio space back on itself. The result is an image that implicates the viewer in its construction, collapsing the distance between subject, photographer, and audience. The deep tonal range of the archival pigment print rewards close attention, with shadow and surface operating as active compositional elements rather than incidental effects. Produced in 2016, the work belongs to Sepuya's sustained investigation into Black queer embodiment, intimacy, and the history of photographic representation. By staging the studio itself as both subject and apparatus, he places pressure on assumptions about transparency and authorship that have long structured portrait photography. The mirror fragment here becomes a kind of threshold, something that reveals and withholds in equal measure. At 33 by 25.4 centimetres, the print operates at an intimate scale that reinforces this sense of proximity, asking the viewer to lean in rather than survey from a distance. This example is the third in an edition of five, with two artist's proofs, and is hand-signed by the artist. The work comes unframed, allowing the collector flexibility in presentation. Its inclusion in the Bronx Museum of the Arts Benefit Auction places it within a long tradition of institutional support for artists working at the intersection of formal rigor and urgent social inquiry, making it a meaningful acquisition for collections attentive to contemporary photography's most consequential voices.
- Medium
- Archival pigment print
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
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