Peter Mitchell (born 1943) is a British documentary photographer, known for documenting Leeds and the surrounding area for more than 40 years. Mitchell's photographs have been published in three monographs of his own. His work was exhibited at Impressions Gallery in 1979, and nearly thirty years later was included in major survey exhibitions throughout the UK including at Tate Britain and Media Space in London, and the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. Mitchell's work is held in the permanent collections of the Royal Photographic Society and Leeds Art Gallery.
In 1979 Impressions Gallery showed his work A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, the pictures showed the traditional urban landscape presented on a background of space charts, the concept being that an alien has landed from Mars and is wandering around Leeds with a degree of surprise and puzzle.[2]Martin Parr described this show as groundbreaking.[3]
His images of Quarry Hill flats were published as Memento Mori in 1990. Mitchell arrived in Leeds in time to record the passing of the great estate.[4][5]
In 2007 Mitchell's work was included in How We Are: Photographing Britain a photography exhibition held at Tate Britain.[6]
The main body of his work documents factories and small shop owners. These photographs were shot throughout the 1970s whilst Mitchell was working as a truck driver in Leeds.[7] He photographed the city whilst commuting "in a very formal manner with the aid of a stepladder."[8] After self-publishing Memento Mori in 1990, his movements within the photography sphere were minimal. After many years of persuasion from Parr, Mitchell later agreed to publishing the monographStrangely Familiar, published by Nazreali Press in 2013.[9]Colin Pantall described this work as "a classic".[10] He told the BBC that it is a "gritty kind of sentimentality".[11]
His follow-up, SomeThing Means Everything to Somebody (2015), shows inanimate objects looked over by scarecrows. Mitchell, a child of the Airfix generation, recorded this collection of scarecrows over 40 years and presents this array of objects and scarecrows as an autobiography. When talking about the book, Peter said "Scarecrows have always been a feature of my childhood...I've purposefully chosen ones that have no face on them because I didn't want people to laugh at them but imagine them as people... I've paired them with the objects that I've got which are my own scruffy little objects - treasured objects I've had since I was little. I chose them because I use them everyday. Everyday objects with the figure of Everyman."[12] Reviewer Karen Jenkins called it a "story of steadfastness and continuity".[13]
In 2020, RRB Photobooks published Early Sunday Morning, edited and sequenced by John Myers, which shows a different Leeds to Mitchell's earlier publications. The book is described as "neither the sombre look at destruction seen in Memento Mori, nor the detached view of 'the man from mars' of A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, but a more intimate document of Mitchell's own Leeds."[14] The book's title is itself a reference to American artist Edward Hopper's 1930 painting by Early Sunday Morning. When discussing the book, writer Geoff Dyer said “It is as if Peter Mitchell has taken the atmosphere and mood of Edward Hopper's famous painting and established it as a matter of documentary fact in the north of England at a moment when collapse can lead to further desolation or possible renewal. So these beautiful pictures are drily drenched in history – social, economic and photographic."
Some Thing means Everything to Somebody. Bristol: RRB, 2015.
Scarecrows. Bristol: RRB, 2015. "A collection of 12 of the Scarecrows from Some Thing means Everything to Somebody, plus a few new suspects, in a perforated postcard book."
A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission. Bristol: RRB, 2017. ISBN978-0993232367. Bilingual English and French language edition. With an essay by Val Williams.
Early Sunday Morning. Bristol: RRB, 2020. Edited and sequenced by John Myers
A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission,Impressions Gallery, York, 1979. The exhibition considered what Leeds would look like to aliens arriving from Mars.[2][3]
^Scharf, Aaron, Grayson, Sue, Messer, Bill, Serpentine Gallery, and Arts Council of Great Britain. Summer Show 4 : The Work of 23 Photographers Selected by Aaron Scharf from an Open Submission ... Serpentine Gallery, 20 August-11 September [1977]. London]: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977. Print.
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