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.

MOODBOARD

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. Martin Parr described this show as ground-breaking.

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.

About & Lifestyle

Peter Mitchell was born in Eccles, near Manchester, in 1943. Shortly afterwards his family moved to Catford, south-east London, where Mitchell spent his formative years. Even in his youth mitchell was a keen collector and diarist, beginning the archive that would later form part of his autobiographical publication Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody.

Leaving school at 16, Mitchell moved to Hampstead heath and began training as a cartographic draughtsman with the civil service where he learned to make architectural maps and drawings, an interest he has maintained, most notably in the self-published Memento Mori.

By 24, Mitchell was seeking new challenges and won at place at Hornsea College of Art where his interest in photography and typography developed.

Peter’s first solo exhibition of 1975, entitled An Impression of the Yorkshire City of Leeds, was funded by the Yorkshire Arts Association and Arts Council of Great Britain formed a part of Leeds’ contribution to the European Architectural year.

It was a success, with the curator encouraging Mitchell to focus on his photography over his screen-printing practice. The 1970s was a key time for photography in Britain, seeing photographers such as Martin Parr and Tom Wood rise to prominence, and Mitchell’s practice was bouyed by this national cultural interest.

Mitchell’s work stayed local to Leeds, and during this time he began the long term project on the city which would become A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission.

He would walk everywhere, taking note of the places he passed, returning later with his camera, ladder and tripod to photograph them.

These walks regularly took him through the Quarry Hill estate in the centre of Leeds, but he had never photographed it, until the first signs of demolition appeared. The demolition of the ill-fated development provided Mitchell with the perfect subject matter to explore his interest in urban regeneration against the backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain.

The redevelopment of Leeds progressed at a lightning pace in this period, Mitchell would photograph a shop front or row of houses one week, only for them to disappear the next.

Mitchell’s work remained resolutely personal, seeking out the people and places of local interest rather than seeking to reveal any great and gritty truth of 1980s British life to a wider audience.

My Analysis

As shown, Mitchell photographs everyday factors you see in the city e.g Leeds and Manchester. This is quite unusual from an outsiders perspective as most photographers are ultimately famous for taking ‘ aesthetically pleasing’ or ‘ beautiful’ according to the human eye, however Mitchell does not glamourize the reality and viewers seem to like it. Each image is differentiated through a variety of themes, however they all portray an old, vintage aesthetic. This is in an interesting and significant factor as by first look you assume that they are not edited which creates a realistic factor to it as well as the vintage aesthetic. This makes you question, what is making it give off this aesthetic. In my opinion, it is the images of the brick buildings and old looking churches through the surroundings and the state it is in. The reason of this, is in this generation the world is becoming more modern day by day. This links to this image.

As shown, Mitchell photographed this brick building with a more modernized and larger building behind it to create contrast. This shows the change in human activity and trends which ultimately relates to the Anthropocene and Robert Adams in the way of contrasting two large factors to one another.

In each image he does not edit the images such as the weather to glamorize it. Within his images, he is using photography to photograph the normality and reality of his lifestyle and possibly even old images to create archives of around the city to then compare and forecast future trends and see how much human activity can impact the earth, such as these images.

Clearly, the typical cinema has changed and become modernized through generations and I assume these houses could be getting taken down possibly for new things. Although people may be living there which creates a sense of inhumanity which significantly links to the Anthropocene as Mitchell is using photography to express the inhumanity on earth and how it is increasing. This links in a different way through how humans leave a large carbon footprint causing climate change but humans doing little about it which could be a sense of inhumane.

MY PHOTOSHOOT PLAN

My plan to relate my work to the Anthropocene and Peter Mitchell is to take images of everyday scenes such as shops and even the cinema. My intention and aim to make some images look old and vintage and compare it to more modernized things such as the typical cinema nowadays and buildings.