I Can Make You Feel Good

Tyler Mitchell's first monograph gathers the photographs and film stills through which he reimagined the American pastoral around Black leisure, tenderness, and interiority rather than its default white subjects.

The 208-page book was published by Prestel in 2020 to accompany Mitchell's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, "I Can Make You Feel Good," at the International Center of Photography, New York (January 25-May 18, 2020). It brings together the body of photography and film Mitchell had built since his early twenties, all built around a single premise. That premise: pictures of young Black subjects at rest, in bloom, in play, staged in fields, front yards, and studio sets bathed in saturated color. The book includes texts by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and photo historian Deborah Willis.

Mitchell (b. 1995, Atlanta) studied film at New York University and came to wide attention in 2018 when, at 23, he became the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for American Vogue. His pictures draw on the vocabulary of documentary and fashion photography while deliberately withholding the strain and struggle that often frame images of Black American life, proposing instead a vision of ease and utopia. "I Can Make You Feel Good" established the terms his subsequent exhibitions and books, including "Chrysalis" (2023) at the Park Avenue Armory, have continued to develop.