Tyler Mitchell was just 23 years old in 2018, when Beyoncé's portrait became the first Vogue cover by a black photographer. Already established, he was suddenly a celebrity. But as was true to others before him, especially Richard Avedon, the precocious success of fashion left him hungry for artistic recognition.
To produce “ghost image” for his first solo exhibition at Gagosian in New York (where the previous Gagosian Show was held in London in 2022), Mitchell traveled to two barrier islands in Georgia's native state. An ominous past lurks beneath the place.
His most powerful photographs are the least artistic. The unforgettable image of a young man obsessed with the fisherman's net lives on in its title, “Ghost Image.” It suggests the fear of confinement at the ocean without resorting to gimmicks to create the point.
And while “The Phantom of Lamin (after Frederic Somer)” manipulates the image, it enriches it. As the title suggests, Mitchell's photographs express the unclear effect of Frederic Somer's technique of printing two negatives on one sheet. When Somer composed a portrait of artist Max Ernst in 1946, Ernst with bare chest appeared to have transformed into part of a cement wall.
But Summer (like Ernst) was a surrealist practitioner, while Mitchell creates another point by montering a shirtless young black man onto a grainy wooden surface. Here, where slavery flourishes, buildings and soil scream with memories of those who suffered. In another clever use of multiple exposures “The Phantom of Gwendolin,” he offers three views of a young woman evaporating invisibly on the tree-lined path.
Mitchell's project recalls landscape photographs created to portray the confused new world Dawoud Bey faced with his arrival in America, and the dangerous journey across forests and streams that fleeing people need to sail as they head to the Underground Railroad in Canada.
Unlike Bey, however, Mitchell doesn't trust straight photos to convey his meaning. Instead, he frequently relies on intrusive gimmicks. “Breakthrough Gulf” is an almost geometric ocean view, a geometric ocean view with pale blue sky, a thin triangle of deeper blue oceans, and a diamond shape of brown sand. In the foreground, a small yacht and wooden hand rows sit in a seawater pool. Without any further decoration, the children's toys resonate strongly with the terrifying ship youkai that landed here a century and a half ago. But Mitchell unnecessarily prints the image on glass, dealing with the shape of the pond, making its surface a mirror.
There are too many unnecessary distractions for this show. For no obvious reason, the photos of the two boys climbing the fence, “old horror and old joy” and the two boys hugging and grappling are printed on a mirror that causes visual confusion, reflecting the viewer's faces. “Whirlpool,” a photograph of dark green water, is rendered on a cloth and hangs down a walnut frame, resembling a bed cover. Larger photos can sometimes be combined with small photos in juxtapositions that cannot enhance the appreciation of individual photos.
As Mitchell does in some examples, printing cheesecloth photos is a cheap way to convey that, although no one denied us seeing the world through a veil of historical memory. His dyed publications are painted on gaussy fabrics, softening and blurring the image. The message they are sending is too obvious. You can see them in one or more ways.
Three tabbys of Mitchell's models standing on the beach are art-directed like a spread in a fashion magazine. However, his individual portraits impressed me more. In “Shine,” a young black man sitting on crude grass is seen from behind as the delicate shadows of leaves on a sunny day form a dark pattern on his bare back. The colour of his denim jeans is picked up by the blue pinpoints that accentuate his hair. This is an effect created optically by reflected sunlight.
Denim pants are standard clothing for enslaved black people, and brought them with them knowledge of how to extract dyes from indigo. The shrub has become a commercial crop in South Carolina. In the photo, the shadow outline of the pinito leaves appears to be indigo. For those familiar with its history, “Shine” is a meditation that stimulates thoughts about how legacy casts a lasting shadow.
Tyler Mitchell: Ghost Image
Until April 5th, Gagosian, 541 West 24th Street, Manhattan. 212-744-1111; gagosian.com
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