With his first Canadian show, Black photographer Tyler Mitchell closes a gap

Tyler Mitchell is best known as the first Black photographer and, at 23, one of the youngest, to shoot the cover of Vogue.

In 2018, Mitchell’s memorable photo of Beyoncé graced the fashion magazine’s much-heralded September issue, with Queen Bey adorned by an enormous floral headpiece suitable for royalty.

Mitchell’s multi-site exhibition “Cultural Turns,” for the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, adds several more firsts to his professional art career. It is his inaugural show in Canada and the first time the Brooklyn-based artist’s portraits have appeared outdoors in a public space.

Besides his show at Contact Gallery on Spadina Avenue, a series of Mitchell’s portraits are on display at Metro Hall, with two more photos on billboards overlooking the corner of Dupont Street and Dovercourt Road.

Walking past Mitchell’s outdoor corridor of 13 photos lining Metro Hall feels like entering an idyllic otherworld where nature is revered and Black bodies of all shades are celebrated for their beauty. That gorgeous glowing light and directness of subject that he brought to Vogue shines through here, as do the flowers and foliage that frame his shots.

This attraction to natural settings hearkens back to Mitchell’s own childhood in Atlanta, Georgia. As a skateboarder moving through spaces, he was always aware of his surroundings. But as he began thinking more deeply about his upbringing in the context of his work, Mitchell was struck by the southern city’s lush greenery, which runs counter to the stereotype that Atlanta is a treeless hyper-urban environment.

“I was interested in shifting the lens toward all the nature in the South and toward Black folks existing within that landscape,” said Mitchell during a conversation at the Contact Gallery. “Nature, and the ability to be in parks and outdoor spaces, was particularly important to me.”

When Mitchell and his curator, British historian and professor Mark Sealy, visited the outdoor installation for the first time, he loved observing people engaging with his work in a new way, slowing down on the street to look at the photos.

“It feels like the city is infused with this nice moment of pastoral calm,” Mitchell said. “I’m interested in how this conversation — which I feel as an American to be particularly from an American perspective — is also one that people of African diaspora can hopefully connect to. I’m excited to see how the images live and are talked about in a Canadian context.”

In many ways, Mitchell’s professional photography career has played out in reverse from the typical trajectory to commercial success. As a film and television grad from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Mitchell followed his interests, unburdened by the weight of the Eurocentric art history taught in most fine-arts programs.

“I’ve had more exposure to Black images than I have to any other images,” said Mitchell, who was intrigued by the Contact exhibition because his friend, the esteemed photographer Carrie Mae Weems, was the festival’s spotlight artist in 2019.

While still at Tisch, Mitchell was already on the hot-stuff radar, shooting commissions for various magazines. The demand only increased after he graduated, as did his desire to build his own practice. In 2019, one of the photos from his Vogue series with Beyoncé was acquired by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery for its permanent collection.

“All of my commercial work at that time felt like personal work,” he said. “Decontextualized, they could have hung in an exhibition. But now I feel that gap is increasing and the reverse is growing, and I’m focused on cultivating my gallery and museum practice.”

One thing that hasn’t changed are Mitchell’s relationships with his subjects: the intimate process he used to shoot one of the world’s most famous people is the same he used, for instance, to capture the two effortlessly cool “Southern Girls,” who pose with a bicycle in front of the traditional picket fence, or the powerful woman in the white suit and glasses, staring directly into the camera from inside a convertible Cadillac.

That image’s title, “Untitled (1932),” is a nod to Harlem photographer James Van Der Zee’s seminal photos of Black New Yorkers, placing Mitchell within a long lineage of artists who strive to capture the essence and pride of their communities.

Mitchell is soft-spoken with a calming demeanour, and it’s easy to see how his subjects would feel trusting of this young talent and his vision. All his styling is very intentional, from a model’s hot-pink pants to a well-placed boutonniere. Mitchell often works with a trusted crew to embody his vision, which fits with his ethos as a filmmaker, where hundreds of people collaborate on a production.

But walking through Mitchell’s exhibition at the Contact Gallery, another side of his talent emerges. These photos are just as composed, but there is a revealing sense of intimacy in many of them, grounded by the artist’s attention to lines and how they connect his subjects, like the twin boys in “Tangled,” who are holding onto a criss-crossing balloon string.

“Composition for me becomes a tool of speaking. Images are so immediate that when you place things in relationship to one another, that’s when you understand how the image maker feels about them,” he said.

Looking around at these portraits, Mitchell also observed how Sealy has curated a show that is really about skin. This is a showcase of Black bodies, in particular, young Black men and their representations. How often do we see images of young Black men playing in a park or blowing a bubble-gum bubble, the vulnerability of a neck exposed?

Sealy pointed to the rare intimacy of “Connective Tissue,” a delightful photo in which a toddler sits atop a man’s bare chest, a line of drool spilling out of his mouth.

As a curator, Sealy brings passion and deep thoughtfulness to Mitchell’s work and its representation of Black subjects. But as a father and a Black man himself, Sealy is also looking for places where he can imagine a safe space for himself.

“As a kid, I’ve been hyper vigilant in public spaces where I have felt unsafe,” said Sealy, pointing to a photo of two teens sitting on swings. “The boy with his eyes closed is like in a place where you can go, and it’s OK just to breathe and be in the atmosphere.”

Toronto may be Mitchell’s city for the month of May, but Sealy hopes the messages in his photos will prevail long after the show is over.

“One of the key things that happens in questions of race is that distance is the thing that separates us. Once distance is there, it’s easy to be hostile with people,” Sealy said.

“So when you produce work that closes that gap and brings us closer together in terms of the imagination, the fantasy and in places of desire, we end up in a healthier place, intellectually and socially. I think this work, although often it’s through the lens of fashion, brings us together in a much more kind of nuanced way.”

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