Peter Mitchell (photographer)


Peter Mitchell 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.

Life and work

Mitchell was born in Manchester in 1943.
In 1979 Impressions Gallery showed his work A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, which considered what Leeds would look like to aliens arriving from Mars. Martin Parr described this show as groundbreaking.
His images of Quarry Hill flats were published as Memento Mori in 1990. His ongoing documentation of Leeds became the critically well received monograph Strangely Familiar. Colin Pantall described this work as "a classic". He told the BBC that it is a "gritty kind of sentimentality". His follow-up, Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody, shows inanimate objects looked over by scarecrows. Reviewer Karen Jenkins called it a "story of steadfastness and continuity".
In 2007 Mitchell's work was included in How We Are: Photographing Britain a photography exhibition held at Tate Britain.

Publications

Mitchell's work is held in the following public collections: