Wish This Was Real is Tyler Mitchell’s (b. 1995) first solo show in Germany. It’s a survey of his career to date – an astonishing accomplishment for a 28 year old. Mitchell rose to prominence in the fashion world, becoming the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue in 2018. Since then, he’s remained prolific, going from strength to strength and establishing body of work that centres around beauty, style, utopia and the outdoors. He’s worked with Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada, breaking down traditional definitions of “fashion” and “fine art” with portraits just as suited to the walls of the Smithsonian as they are on Instagram or the pages of Vanity Fair or ID. This latest presentation includes works spanning from 2016 until just a few months ago. Its goal: to expand representations of Black life and masculinity.
It’s an essential vision, and one that is shared by art collector and curator Dr. Kenneth Montague. He included Mitchell in the 2021 book As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, a compilation of over 100 works hailing from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the USA, South America, as well as throughout the African continent. “The images that I collect are not around oppression and violence, but [focus on] showing the beauty of ordinary Black life. This is like a secret knowledge, and there’s this aspect of the Black imaginary – a magical realism – which is a bit of a cultural secret. There’s a knowing wink, a knowing nod I get from Black people when they peruse these images. Many of these pictures remind you of your own family: ‘That looks just like my aunties getting together for a family event’, or ‘That looks like something my cousins in the UK did when they were visiting us on vacation.’”
This sense of familiarity and ease is exactly what Mitchell is aiming for. He wants to create an image that is accessible, where viewers can imagine themselves within the frame. “I’m from Atlanta, Georgia, which is the greenest metropolis in the USA,” Mitchell explains. “Nature was central to me as a kid. Now, I’m making work about how Black people relate to the outdoors in a psychological way. In the southern USA, there’s a contention around the outdoors for Black Americans – in terms of desire or unfulfilled promises. You might think about 40 acres and a mule – that was the reparation to be repaid to Black people after the American Civil War (1861-1865), but it never happened. All of these ideas sit against the backdrop of my work, which plays with leisure and repose in a landscape that has historically excluded us.”
This message is never clearer than in I Can Make You Feel Good, Mitchell’s first monograph, which is replete with scenes of fun and play: hula-hoops, gingham blankets and endless summer days. It’s part of wider artistic rethinking of the relationships people of non-white backgrounds have with the land. There’s Donavon Smallwood, Aperture Portfolio Prize-winner, who depicts Black Americans in repose across New York City’s parks. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, British artist and Turner Prize-nominee Ingrid Pollard addresses English landscapes and their resonances with race, power and history. Right now, at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, Soulscapes examines the environment in artworks by creatives of the African diaspora, including Isaac Julien and Mónica de Miranda.
In 2019, Mitchell’s work was featured on the cover of The New Black Vanguard, a landmark book celebrating contemporary Black creativity. Fifteen international imagemakers, including Dana Scruggs, Micaiah Carter and Nadine Ijewere, as well as stylists, models and make-up artists, were selected by curator and critic Antwaun Sargent, Director at Gagosian. The publication recognised a new kind of editorial portraiture defined by authenticity and a focus on the multifarious lived experiences of Black individuals, and it has left a legacy. The show travelled from the USA to London because of public demand; it was a partially unplanned tour that arose from audiences who understood the necessity of pictures representative of society. Moreover, The New Black Vanguard came at an unprecedented moment in time, which, reinforced by the truths laid bare during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, instigated museums to reassess their collections. The world woke up, opening the doors for overdue programming.
In 2022, Ekow Eshun’s In the Black Fantastic assembled imagery from across the African diaspora to look at science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism at London’s Hayward Gallery. Africa Fashion was the largest showcase of designs from the continent to date, making stops at Brooklyn Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Recently, Tate Modern held A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, and, right now, Entangled Pasts is tracing the colonial history of the Royal Academy of Arts. Finally, the art world is carving out a space within which to explore the interdisciplinarity of fine art, culture. fashion, history, identity and race. Sargent’s influence has been profound. “It shifted the nature of things. I’m so thankful to him for seeing what was going on,” Mitchell reflects. “He asked: why is this moment in photography important? How come myself, and other creatives of my generation, are thinking about the fashion image as something that is less censorious and more reflective of real life? How do we work to include narratives that we haven’t yet seen? I think the book did a great job of breaking that down and it obviously had a huge impact. The show travelled for five years; you just don’t see that anymore. There was a global appetite for that sort of work. Looking back on it, with years of distance, it was a real moment. Now, we’re blossoming into our own careers and are taking different directions.”
However, Mitchell hasn’t committed to just one method of travel. He’s interested in another trajectory – one that treads the lines between established genres. In his world, there’s no limit to where, and how, stories should be told. A high-end editorial spread holds just as much value as a conceptual museum exhibit or grassroots curatorial project. “Photography is a lovely medium, but it’s also complicated. It has many applications: documentary, social media, commercial, fashion and fine art. As I’ve matured, and become more skilled, I’ve embraced many of those approaches rather than trying to separate or structure them. I rose to prominence in a fashion context by shooting for magazines like Vogue and ID. That felt like one outlet for my work, but I also saw the potential for many more. I get very excited by that idea.”
Domestic Imaginaries, Mitchell’s 2023 show at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, expanded into the realms of sculpture and installation. Here, the artist exhibited dye sublimation prints, not on paper or hung against walls, but on fabric and arranged as if on a laundry line. The installation enveloped viewers as they walked through, immersing themselves in bucolic scenes and delicate images of Black bodies. Here, photographs move from two to three dimensions – becoming objects to encounter. Elsewhere, mid-century furniture pieces – Altars, as he calls them – were built to hold personal pictures and inspirational photobooks. “I’m thinking about the Black interior, and how Americans have fashioned and styled their homes over the years.” Wish This Was Real continues this thread, with prints appearing on mirrors and cloth, as well as video installations and sculptures.
Beyond his limitless ideas and enormous talent, one of the most striking things about Mitchell is his commitment to the art of storytelling and his desire to share creativity with others. His name has become synonymous with fashion heavyweights like Vogue – a world that can seem out of reach. Yet his dedication to community is unwavering. During the pandemic, he started Night at the Cinema, in which he shared his computer screen and played a whole bevy of music, film and art material. “It was a real communal thing and I’ve continued it in several museums since.” It’s also an outlet for one of his many passions; Mitchell is an ardent cinephile. “Filmmaking is my first love; it was my first medium. My work contains a real narrative quality, and I’m fixated on the idea of what my work could look like in a “real” filmmaking context, whether that be a short or feature film.” Fittingly, Wish This Was Real is named after one of Mitchell’s first ever moving-image pieces, which was produced when the artist was a student in college.
References to cinema appear throughout the exhibition at C/O Berlin. New Horizons is one example, showing two figures in front of an artificial cloud-filled sky. “The Truman Show was something I was thinking about at the time: this idea of unfulfilled and false promises. But New Horizons is also about looking back to the mid-to-late 20th century, when American families would regularly travel to photo studios situated in malls and shopping centres. There would be a series of painted backdrops to choose from. Each contained a lot of history and meaning, and what you selected became a part of who you are. So, these fabrics become a site for Black self-determination and presentation.” Viewers might also notice the recurring visual motif of twins, where figures sit back-to-back or arm-in-arm. “I love movies like Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, where there’s a doubling effect going on, a dual consciousness. It’s also a concept in American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois’ work – the idea of two sides of a coin.”
Wish This Was Real marks Mitchell’s first foray into curation. It features contributions from an array of acclaimed intergenerational artists: Baldwin Lee, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Garrett Bradley, the Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, Grace Wales Bonner and Rashid Johnson amongst others. “Those people are placed alongside my work so that, hopefully, the viewer can understand the way in which photography really tells stories in physical space.” Mitchell sees photographs as objects: they are not static, but active participants that can shape how people think about, and interact with, the world.
The idea of seeing Bey’s haunting Elegy landscapes, which trace journeys of the Virginia slave trail, Louisiana plantations and Ohio’s Underground Railroad, alongside Mitchell’s visions of a contemporary Black utopia, is especially poignant. Here, dreams of paradise are set against the backdrop of history. So, what’s next? Will we see more of Mitchell’s inspired curatorial vision? The answer: watch this space, there’s more to come. “I’m looking forward to more shows and more fun. I’d like to bring more people together, and I am hoping to curate a full exhibition. As an exercise, it excites me. The C/O Berlin show is really my first stab at this, and I hope I will be able to produce a more expansive presentation soon.”
Wish This Was Real | C/O Berlin | 1 June – 5 September
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image credits:
1. Tyler Mitchell, New Horizons II, (2022). Image courtesy the artist. ©Tyler Mitchell
2. Tyler Mitchell, Untitled (Lunarlander), (2018). Image courtesy the artist. ©Tyler Mitchell
3. Tyler Mitchell, New Horizons II, (2022). Image courtesy the artist. ©Tyler Mitchell
4. Tyler Mitchell, Untitled (Blue Laundry), (2019). Image courtesy the artist. ©Tyler Mitchell
5. Tyler Mitchell, Motherlan Skating, (2019. Image courtesy the artist. ©Tyler Mitchell
6. Tyler Mitchell, The root of all that lives, (2020). Image courtesy the artist. ©Tyler Mitchell
