Carlos Nazario and Tyler Mitchell On Why They Chose Texas to Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary

Stylist Carlos Nazario and photographer Tyler Mitchell, who worked together on the summer issue’s “Lone Star State of Mind: Snapshots of Texans Today” shoot, first met when Mitchell was an intern at Art Partner. A mutual friend introduced them and showed Nazario some of Mitchell’s photos. Mitchell was intimidated. “I instantly was like, this kid’s amazing” Nazario told Chloe Malle on the latest episode of The Run-Through. 

Mitchell began photographing as a teenager in Atlanta and quickly became a serious student of the medium. “I started to realize that the images that we're surrounded with in our daily lives are made by pretty much 12 people. I was like, there should be more voices here. That was really the call to action for me.” His perseverance paid off. In 2018, when he was just 23 years old, he was asked to shoot Beyonce’s fourth Vogue cover for the September issue. 

The creative duo came to the studio to discuss this stunning shoot from the summer issue, in which they travelled to Texas to capture an array of images that represent both modern Texan life and more broadly what some of America’s diversity looks like. Among their subjects were Dallas-born model Ruth Deng and her family, an Austin-based escaramuza team, a Houston-based cowboy, and The Ocean of Soul, Texas Southern University’s celebrated marching band. Though neither of them had spent significant time in the state prior to the shoot, Mitchell felt it was critical for them to be there. “We have to look at the South. To understand the dynamics of this country, one cannot avert their eyes from the South.”

Vogue’s summer issue, which highlights America’s 250th anniversary, really required that the masthead and the pair think deeply about what this celebration would look like. “My first thought was it's a complicated time in our history,” Mitchell noted, “And so without being naive to that reality, how do we address people's real lives?” Their response, he jokes, to that difficult request, was to head straight to the borderlands—they decided to set part of this photo series in Big Bend National Park, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border. 

In a very American turn of events, just as Vogue was settling on the national park as a location, news came out about the possibility of building a border wall through the middle of it. Plans to build this wall through the park have since been called off, but the prospect of such a development still loomed large over the shoot. “Your phone actually changes time zones down there,” Nazario explained. “But you also get down there, and you are in the river, and you're thinking, borders are so arbitrary,” Mitchell added. 

The Run-Through with Vogue is your go-to podcast where fashion meets culture. Hosted by Chloe Malle, Head of Editorial Content, Vogue U.S.; Chioma Nnadi, Head of British Vogue; and Nicole Phelps, Director of Vogue Runway, each episode features the latest fashion news and exclusive designer and celebrity interviews.

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