Visual & Studio Arts Lecture Series: Tyler Mitchell

The Visual Arts Program, is pleased to invite members of the College Community and the public(with proof of vaccination) to a talk by Tyler Mitchell, one of the most exciting, young artists working today. On Wednesday, October 27th, at 7:00pm, in room B of the Barbara Walters Campus Center, Mr. Mitchell will discuss his work, and his vision, that encompasses a lovingly remembered past, and a utopian future for Black people in America.  Using still photographs, video, and installation art, Tyler Mitchell creates sweeping spectacles that implicitly acknowledge the unspeakable injustices that have occurred and occur everyday, and yet finds great beauty in love and family life that has and does occur despite all.  In doing so, Tyler Mitchell communicates a narratives of rest, repose, belonging, leisure and joy for Black people, an important distinction when compared to traditional portrayals of the community. His art compels us to remember the love and the hope that every family has for their children, the dreams accomplished and the triumphs.

Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995 Atlanta, GA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is a photographer and filmmaker working across many genres to explore and document a new aesthetic of Blackness.

In 2018, he made history as the first Black photographer to shoot a cover of American Vogue for Beyoncé’s appearance in the September issue. The following year, a portrait from this series was acquired by The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery for its permanent collection. In 2019 Mitchell held his first solo exhibition, I Can Make You Feel Good, at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam where he showed new photographic and video works including his film Idyllic Space. An iteration of the show traveled to the International Center of Photography in New York in 2020. Mitchell published an eponymous monograph with Prestel Random House in conjunction with the exhibition, further exploring his take on a Black visual utopia.

In 2020 Mitchell was announced as the recipient of the Gordon Parks Fellowship, which will support a new project that reflects and draws inspiration from Parks’ central themes of representation and social justice. Mitchell’s fellowship will culminate in an exhibition of the new works at the Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery in Pleasantville, NY.

Mitchell has lectured at a number of institutions on the politics of image making including Harvard University, Paris Photo and the International Center of Photography (ICP).