Tyler Mitchell

Artist Tyler Mitchell has been on a hot streak since 2018, one year after graduating from the film department at New York University. It was then at just 23 years old that he photographed Beyoncé for the cover of American Vogue, marking the first time an African American photographer had captured the magazine’s cover.

In 2019, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery acquired one of his portraits of Beyoncé, and his first solo exhibition, “I Can Make You Feel Good,” opened at Foam museum in Amsterdam. The show revealed personal and commissioned images alongside two of his films, Idyllic Space and Chasing Pink, Found Red. In January 2020, a second iteration appeared in New York City at the International Center of Photography,with a selection of images printed on fabrics and hung on a laundry line down a 60-foot hallway. With the physical environment playfully activated, Mitchell’s images were presented conceptually as art, evolving the idea of what his practice was and could be.

His work has since appeared in esteemed galleries, institutions, and universities, like Jack Shainman Gallery, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Fashion brands, tech giants, and magazines—like Louis Vuitton, LOEWE, Moncler, Apple, Vanity Fair, W, and The Wall Street Journal—have also flocked to get in front of Mitchell’s lens, looking to tap into his spark, something felt and not just seen. A kaleidoscopic tapestry of self-expression and freedom, Mitchell’s images are celebrated for blending culture with societal complexities important to both the subject and the viewer. From race and age to joy and stillness, underlying messages are revealed through traces of emotion and a visual symphony of light, color, texture, and time.

Meanwhile, Mitchell remains true to his personal life and experiences as a Black American photographer from the South. These meditations are explored in depth in his exhibitions opening this summer: “Wish This Was Real” at C/O Berlin in Germany (June 1–September 5, 2024) and “Idyllic Space” (June 21–December 1, 2024) at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. The latter is a major homecoming for the artist, as he was born and raised in Atlanta, and it was the first museum he visited as a child.