Wish This Was Real

The definitive early-career survey of one of the most compelling photographers of his generation.

Tyler Mitchell’s photography is animated by dreams of paradise and joy against the backdrop of history. Since his rise to prominence in the worlds of art and fashion, Mitchell has created images of beauty, utopia, and the American landscape that expand the imaginary of Blackness in the twenty-first century. Wish This Was Real is the definitive early-career survey of Mitchell’s work, offering a comprehensive look into the subjects driving his artistic practice, from his genre-bending portraits made in the United States, Europe, and West Africa to his photographs printed on diaphanous fabrics and sculptures that reference Black intellectual heritage. Presenting new perspectives by leading writers on his long-standing themes of self-determination and the extraordinary radiance of the everyday, Wish This Was Real shows how photography can be rooted in a collective past while evoking imagined futures.

Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real was made possible, in part, through lead support from Coach. Aperture gratefully acknowledges additional support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. For their generous contributions, Aperture also wishes to thank Dr. Kathryn Beal, David Dechman and Michael Mercure, Béryl and Rex Hamilton, Pamela Thomas-Graham, Michael Hoeh, Cathy M. Kaplan, and Yesim and Dusty Philip. 

Tyler Mitchell (born in Atlanta, 1995) is a Brooklyn-based artist, photographer, and filmmaker. He received a BFA in film and television from New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 2017. Mitchell’s work has been published widely in magazines, including Aperture, Dazed, i-D, Interview, M le magazine du Monde, Vanity Fair, Vogue, W, WSJ Magazine, and ZEITmagazin. His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Brooklyn Museum, all in New York; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2018, Mitchell was commissioned to photograph Beyoncé for Vogue, making history, at the age of twenty-three, as the first Black photographer to shoot the magazine’s cover. Mitchell’s first solo exhibition, I Can Make You Feel Good (2019–20), was presented at Foam, Amsterdam, and at the International Center of Photography, New York. He is the photographer of the catalog for Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the Costume Institute’s spring 2025 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His solo exhibition Wish This Was Real (2024–26) opened at C/O Berlin in 2024 and toured to the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; Photo Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.

Anna Wintour is the editor in chief of Vogue and the global chief content officer of Condé Nast.

Sophie Cavoulacos is associate curator in the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Brendan Embser is senior editor at Aperture and the cocurator of Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real.

Rashid Johnson is an artist based in New York. His solo exhibition A Poem for Deep Thinkers was presented by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2025.