With Tyler Mitchell set to shoot Beyoncé for the September cover of Vogue, we thought we’d take a look at all the times he’s shot for i-D. When he first shot for us, in 2016, he was a student at NYU, who had started taking photographs at 15 after a friend introduced him to a Canon camera. His Atlanta portfolio highlighted his diverse and vibrant hometown, and he’s since gone on to shoot artist, designers and musicians for i-D.
1. Why We Need More Designers Like Telfar.
Mitchell shot radical NY designer Telfar alongside his friends and collaborators for our Summer 2018 issue. “Often the press gets confused, and says like, ‘Oh you’re so diverse!’” Telfar’s creative director Babak Radboy told i-D. “No. It’s mostly brown people! We’re not diverse at all! The politics are not a statement. The gender “thing” is not a challenge. These are the clothes that Telfar wants to make.”
2. Nigerian artist Toyin Odutola paints radically soft visions of black wealth.
“It’s almost like we don’t get the right to imagine what black wealth looked like,” Ojih told i-D for our Spring 2018 issue. “For me, it’s tricky. With Afrofuturism, we always say the future is going to get better. But what if all of these things we’re imagining have happened?”
3. Atlanta’s young creatives sound off on their city’s renaissance.
“I love Atlanta because it made me. It’s one of the most creative and diverse places I’ve been to, and I’ve been on tour through Australia and Europe,” artist Raury told i-D in 2016, for what was Mitchell’s first story for i-D. “It’s a predominantly black city, and I love it here. I leave, and I’m just making my plans to come back.”
4.Kimberly Drew wants to radically rethink art world structures.
“Being a highly visible, queer black woman in a field that is overwhelmingly homogeneous across lines of race, class, and disability often leaves me with more questions than answers,” Drew said to i-D. “According to a 2013 study funded by the Mellon Foundation, 84% of curatorial roles in museums are held by non-Hispanic white people. This means that nearly 84% of the people who are making critical decisions about who is added to the canon, who becomes the subject of monographs, and which art is important enough to be remembered, are from the same racial group (and in most cases, the same socioeconomic background).”
5. Tyler Mitchell’s year in photos.
Mitchell’s photography portfolio for i-D included shots of Slick Woods, Abra, and Amandla Stenberg. His biggest fans, however, are definitely his family. “I realized I wasn’t photographing my family enough or at all. So here’s a recent portrait I took of my mom in our house in Atlanta over Thanksgiving. Because if it weren’t for her and my dad, I wouldn’t be writing this.”