Why Tyler Mitchell, Nadine Ijewere and others are shaking up the industryTyler Mitchell was only 23 when he was invited to photograph Beyoncé for American Vogue´s September 2018 issue. In one of the two covers, she smoulders at the camera, wearing barely-there makeup and balancing a halo of colourful flowers on her head. In the other, she stands outside in an Alexander McQueen tiered dress with pan-African coloured lace, lifting white material above her natural braided hair. There is a raw beauty to both, casting the almost superhuman pop star in an unusually intimate light. But that wasn´t the only noteworthy thing about the pictures: Mitchell had made history, as the first African American photographer to shoot a Vogue cover.A few months later, Nadine Ijewere became the first black woman to reach a similar milestone, when she shot the singer Dua Lipa in a Gucci gown for the January 2019 issue of Edward Enninful´s British Vogue. Both covers were widely celebrated as landmark moments, but Mitchell is quick to level an awkward question at the media gatekeepers: `Why did it happen so late? If it were up to me, it would have happened earlier,` he tells me on the phone from New York. Continue reading...
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