Mitchell often conjures a vision of what he calls “Black utopia,” where his subjects lounge and play in a manner that mirrors his adolescent days in Georgia, which were spent skateboarding with friends, swimming in a pond near his parents’ suburban home, and taking solitary sojourns into nature. In one image—a favorite of mine—a man lies on an expanse of sand, cradling a smiling child, whose drool is pooling on the man’s shirtless chest. Many pictures feature Black subjects swimming or playing in water, a subtle reclamation of a leisure activity that has historically excluded some Black Americans, and a nod to a dark history of the Middle Passage. As idyllic as Mitchell’s scenes appear, they leave you wrestling with the uncomfortable reasons why they nevertheless feel so bracingly novel. In one image, a multi-generational crew is arrayed on the banks of a river, in a tableau that recalls Seurat’s Seine-side “La Grande Jatte”; to underline the comparison, one of the figures is painting en plein air.