Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Dark Room A–Z

Polymode designed Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s most recent catalogue unpacking his Dark Room series (2016–21), offering a deep dive into the thick network of references and the interconnected community of artists and subjects that Sepuya has interwoven throughout the images. Sepuya’s photography is grounded in a collaborative, rhizomatic approach to studio practice and portraiture. The excavation and mapping of intellectual and artistic data points across the artist’s work is presented through three distinct “voices,” allowing for a comprehensive cross-referencing of conceptual categories. Each category is alphabetized and illuminated via new texts by curator and scholar Gökcan Demirkazik; selections from previously published texts about the work by critics, colleagues, and friends; quotations of other writers’ work that inspire the artist; as well as writings by the artist on his thematic preoccupations as they appear and reappear throughout this ongoing body of work. Dark Room A–Z serves as an iterative return and exhaustive manual to the strategies and generative ways of working that have informed Sepuya’s image-making, after nearly two decades of practice.

Our collective design process was a very intimate collaboration with Sepuya, Demirkazik, and Aperture that included real-time working sessions on multiple book prototypes, the final layout, and production phase. The book’s complex but flexible grid system is activated with Polymode Sans, a variable type designed by XYZ type in collaboration with Polymode with a unique attribute called the “realness” axis that imbues the multiple voices with typographic intonation and emphasis. Klim type foundry’s Tiempos is a sturdy serif typeface that creates a stoic counterpoint to Polymode Sans. The binding materials and method create a resonance to reference books found in archives and libraries.