Amid the hushed corridors and striking constructivist architecture of Paris’s Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Tyler Mitchell’s Wish This Was Real explores dreamlike environments. His first solo exhibition in France, is on view until 25 January 2026, and bathes the viewer in utopian light while unveiling a fresh visual lexicon of Black life, where beautiful boys, memory, and colours come together.

In the heart of Paris, Mitchell asks: what if the world we hope for were already here? And in his images, for a while, maybe it is.

Mitchell, born in Atlanta in 1995 and living in Brooklyn, brings ten years of his artistic practice into this sprawling Parisian museum. The show, curated by Brendan Embser and Sophia Grieff in collaboration with MEP’s Clothilde Morette, unfolds in three thematic areas: Lives/Liberties, Postcolonial/Pastoral, and Family/Fraternity. Each section tracks a strand of Mitchell’s work, skate culture, memory, community, while building a bridge between his earliest videos (opening the show) and his most recent experiments.

“I aim to visualize what a Black utopia looks like or could look like. People say utopia is never achievable, but I love photography’s possibility of allowing me to dream and make that dream become very real.” Tyler Mitchell said.

In Lives/Liberties, we hear the echo of youth and freedom. A video from 2015, also titled Wish This Was Real, plays as a meditation on innocence and political dissonance in America. Then comes Postcolonial/Pastoral: landscapes bristle with colour and possibility, as Mitchell stages utopian scenes in nature, rooted in the weight of history yet reaching for some imagined future. And in Family/Fraternity, he offers portraits of intimacy, gentle gatherings and quiet resilience.

What makes the exhibition electrifying is not only the images. Mirrors reflect his subjects’ faces back to us, fabric captures the drift of fashion. Through these layered media, he traces the “New Black Vanguard”, redefining the vocabulary of portraiture, fashion, and art. It’s simply stunning!

Mitchell’s people (Harry Styles and Childish Gambino are part of this constellation) live in paradises he conjures. In his vision, they deserve to be seen as whole. Wish This Was Real is an invitation to look, to dream, to imagine a world stitched from the threads of love.

Mitchell’s work at MEP, resonates with the adjacent galleries, echoing the sensuality and gay desire of Felipe Romero Beltrán while conversing with the classical precision and sculptural rigor of Edward Weston.

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Images: Tyler Mitchell, Convivial Conversation, 2024 © Tyler Mitchell, Courtesy Gagosian.