Book Review: I Can Make You Feel Good by Tyler Mitchell
There are gummy bears all around.
The candy catches the light like jewels strewn across the rich, red floor.
They glow there, dropped on chest and belly. One held - pinched - between fingers. Wrist tipped back, readying itself for motion.
Perhaps the bear will be tossed up. Perhaps it will bounce off cheek or nose. Perhaps it will land in mouth.
This image is a still from the installation piece, Idyllic Space, created by Tyler Mitchell in 2019. The subjects in this photograph, two Black youth, lay with their backs upon the floor, the crowns of their heads resting calm above the other person’s shoulder. Depending on the orientation of the image, one is always right side up, while the other is always upside down. As mentioned, gummy bears dot the scene. There is such a clear and playful narrative in this image - two young people eating candy, making a game of it. It is as mundane as it is intimate. The image becomes a kind of visual maquette of the photobook as a whole, a sort of microcosm of Mitchell’s first monograph, I Can Make You Feel Good: a candy colored palette, a boundless experiment in directionality and viewer expectation, a sense of intimacy grounded in the playful, a sensual vision of Black utopia.
The photographs throughout this book play with the viewer’s sense of space, particularly their own orientation to the subject. Consider the gummy bears. Not only do they serve a narrative purpose in their scattered state, they also establish an upward directionality from the image itself. The implication of the gummy bears being tossed up at us, builds a sense of space beyond the image itself, pulling us in with the trajectory of the falling bears. As we look down at the image, we can imagine that space being bridged by these flying, falling gummies. This play with space and narrative serve as a pseudo-physical invitation into this world of dreamscapes.
We are put above, below, and alongside the subjects in these photographs, in an assertive way that requires an agility of expectation. We gaze up at a person riding a tricycle, caught up in the mystery of how we can possibly witness all three wheels above us. Where does this place us as the viewer; below the tires, below the ground? Our spatial orientation to the subject is implied, assumed, and twisted. We tumble, we rest, we run along with the subjects of these images.
This motion also gains momentum from the careful sequencing of these images. A light skinned person stands in white tulle dress, their hands lost in the fluffy fabric. When we turn the page, the subsequent image is rotated 45 degrees. Vertical now, we see the back of a person, their brown hands holding softly to their forearms, gently linked there behind their back, cozy inside of a light blue sweatshirt. The next page turns us back, another 45 degree rotation, almost knocking us down into this image of repose. A person with deep brown skin, in a white leotard, appears to be laying on their back, chin tilted up to the sky above them. This initial change of orientation twists the viewers expectation. We expect this person to be resting on their back, but upon noticing the shadows, we realize that they are actually standing, leaning slightly back into the golden fabric hanging behind them. The next page plays with our expectation even further by showing us nothing but clouds; effectively tipping us back onto our backs, looking up at the sky, presumably above us.
In addition to this twirling orientation, Mitchell’s commanding use of composition functions almost like a hand pushing the merry-go-round at a playground. The potent energy of a small blue ball in hand, a hula hoop around a waist, his compositional play with motion blur, and the power of a body paused, mid-stride. Throughout the book we see Black bodies dancing, running, cuddling together, resting in the ivy. Even the light of the images, a dappled natural glow, fuels this momentum by necessitating movement; the sun that rises and sets and collaborates with the clouds and foliage.
The sweet intimacy of light on skin, of light through lace, and, inversely, shadow across pavement; all of the brightness and shadow that accompany natural light are amplified by the vivid textures of these photographs: the silk, the skin, leaves, sand, knuckles, ribbons, bubbles, etc. The sensuality of texture invigorates the intimacy between the subjects of the images through the subtlety of detail: smooth, pink fingernail in harmony with golden velour. There is so much touch throughout. Space blanket to temple, baby fingers toying with a long braid, bodies pressed back to back, piercings pressed through soft tongue.
The intimate access granted to texture throughout these images is transmuted, from visual to physical, when we engage with the tangible book itself. With its full-bleed print, thick, matte pages and lay-flat binding, this large and lush book opens up like a portal into Mitchell’s utopia, a window into each vignette. The texture of the cover mimics the denim worn by the youth in the image, a soft but sturdy fabric. To turn each heavy page creates a physical transition, something like the ticking of a spinning prize wheel, there is a physical shift that announces the movement from one peg to the next.
The book opens and closes with short essays from Tyler Mitchell himself, Mirjam Kooiman, the curator at the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam, Isolde Brielmaier, a curator and scholar, and Deborah Willis, the artist, curator, historian, and educator. In many ways, these words provide a tether on either end of the whirring sensuality that is I Can Make You Feel Good - they serve as a long string, allowing the kite to lift into the clouds, to be caught up in the whimsy of the breeze. Mitchell describes the potential of his photographic work:
“I aim to visualize what a Black utopia looks like or could look like. People say utopia is never achievable, but I love the possibility that photography brings. It allows me to dream and make that dream become very real.”
When you close this photobook, you can almost smell the grass and taste the candy of Mitchell’s dream.
Enjoy the feeling in your chest. Heart and head full of the velocity of this visual poetry, this vivid, dreaming reality.
— Sophia Díaz
