Tyler Mitchell was solely 23 in 2018, when his portrait of Beyoncé turned the primary Vogue cowl by a Black photographer. Already established, he was all of a sudden a star. However as was true for others earlier than him, notably Richard Avedon, precocious success in style left him hungry for inventive recognition.
To provide “Ghost Photographs,” his first solo exhibition at Gagosian in New York (a previous Gagosian show was held in London in 2022), Mitchell traveled final 12 months to 2 barrier islands in his native state of Georgia, together with Jekyll Island, the place enslaved folks have been transported by ship as late as 1858. Amid bucolic settings, he posed Black fashions in particular person portraits and staged teams, aiming to evoke not solely the great thing about the place however the disquieting previous that lurks beneath it.
His strongest images are the least arty. A haunting picture of a younger man ensnared in a fisherman’s internet, with one eye prominently seen by the mesh, lives as much as its title, “Ghost Picture.” It suggests the horror of entrapment at sea with out counting on gimmickry to make the purpose.
And whereas “Lamine’s Apparition (After Frederick Sommer)” manipulates the picture, it does so adroitly. Because the title signifies, Mitchell’s image reprises a way employed by Frederick Sommer of printing two negatives on one sheet to unearthly impact. When Sommer composed a portrait of the artist Max Ernst in 1946, the bare-chested Ernst appeared to be remodeling into a part of a cement wall.
