Let’s go on a small dream journey, shall we? Close your eyes, sit back. And imagine you’re twenty-three years young. You’re twenty-three years young and suddenly shoot, let’s say, Beyoncé for the cover of American Vogue. Imagine you’re the first Black photographer to ever do that. Imagine after that you’re regularly invited to the Met Gala, not to work in the background, but as a guest who walks the red carpet and who gets dressed by Wales Bonner and Prada. Imagine you’ve taken portraits of Virgil Abloh, Anok Yai, Harry Styles, and Kamala Harris, among many more. Now, imagine the time passed, and today you’re thirty. You get your first solo exhibition in Paris. It’s a crazy career, I know. Something that happens only to a very small percentage of creatives, let alone to Black creatives, but it’s exactly what Tyler Mitchell did. Exactly where he is right now. Until January 25th next year, you can visit Wish This Was Real at the MEP, his first ever solo exhibition in the city of love, lights, and fashion.
I would love to know how you felt during the short dream journey. What your thoughts were. Were you impressed? Inspired? Jealous, maybe? Understandable. This exhibition is about Mitchell being an artist, photographer, and filmmaker born in Atlanta. About him buying his first ever Canon camera in his teenage years and teaching himself to shoot skateboarding videos. About him creating a visual language that tells a story of beauty, style, and utopia. A visual language that is gentle, whimsical, and makes you wonder. And, most importantly, about him creating fictionalised moments of an imagined, paradisiacal future of Black life: empowerment and self-determination.
Looking at his images, you can see that Mitchell’s work is often inspired by pastoral and domestic scenes. A garden, for example. A playground. Two women doing their hair. A group of people having a picnic on the bank of a small river. It’s dreamy, but somehow, it’s also everyday life. It’s a fictional future, set against the backdrop of historical elements. Alongside these images, the MEP now features works from the past ten years, showing the popular photographer’s artistic practice through, of course, photography, but also video and sculpture. Through portraits taken in the US, in Europe and in West Africa. Prints on fabrics and on mirrors. Brief interjection: The exhibition showcases works that were created when Mitchell was twenty… No pressure, but what did you do when you were twenty?
It's probably better to not compare yourself so much, so let's not. I’m joking anyway. Mitchell deserves every piece of success he has and is a necessary figure in the public creative scene. Even if you didn’t know him before that much, the chance that you have seen some of his photography somewhere, on billboards, social media or magazines, is pretty high. For example, the catalogue photography project for this year’s Met exhibition—as you can see, he’s very close with Anna—for the theme Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. In this catalogue, there is a big variety of prominent Black figures featured. Law Roach, ASAP Rocky and Anok Yai, among others, all dressed and staged as stylish dandies. Or, if you watched the fourth season of The Bear, you probably saw two of his artworks appear as framed pieces in Sydney Adamu’s flat. Should I name more? I guess not.
To showcase Mitchell’s work from the past ten years in a logical way, the MEP, under the guidance of co-curators Brendan Embser, Sophia Greiff, and Clothilde Morette, decided to divide everything into three thematic sectors that follow the photographer’s artistic evolution. There’s Lives/Liberties, focused on early influences, immersion in skateboard culture, leisure, community, self-expression, and societal unrest at the same time. Then there’s Postcolonial/Pastoral, showing elaborate, blissful scenes in nature, inviting contemplation through vibrant landscapes and symbolic references and the idea of a paradise that is underscored by the complexities of social identity and history. The last sector after that is Family/Fraternity, a sector that celebrates the resilience and heritage of Black communities, showing family portraits and intimate scenes. Home as a sanctuary.
That’s a lot of words to describe the exhibition, but in the end, you just have to go visit it yourself and remember one sentence: Wish This Was Real by Mitchell shows how portraiture can be rooted in the past, in history and experiences, while evoking imagined futures. He expands visions of Black life and creates a world in which Black creatives, personalities and everyday moments finally get their well-deserved space. Oops, that was two sentences. But all jokes aside. If you’re in Paris anytime until the end of January 2026, continue the dream journey and go to the MEP to celebrate one of the most successful and most talented photographers of our generation. To celebrate Tyler Mitchell.
