Nothing Lasts Forever - Peter Mitchell

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER PETER MITCHELL

A STRANGE AND FAMILIAR WORLD

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CONTENTS

Foreword 7 Memento Mori 10 Strangely Familiar 25 Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody

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A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission

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Early Sunday Morning 84 Epilogue 104 Collected Ephemera 121 Some Thing, Everything, an essay by Diane Smith

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List of Captions 146

50 years ago, Peter Mitchell walked into Leeds City Art Gallery and was fortunate to encounter the visionary Sheila Ross, the curator of the Education Gallery, who was so struck by his photographs that she gave him a solo exhibition a year later ‘An Impression of the Yorkshire City of LEEDS’. Fast forward to 2024 and the very same gallery, now called Leeds Art Gallery, is honouring Peter’s remarkable career with a major retrospective exhibition.

‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ is his poetic title for the exhibition and publication, and together they create a timely opportunity to discover, explore and reflect upon key bodies of work by one of the most important colour photographers of the 20th century. Peter is an astute observer, whether he is telling a story from the perspective of an alien explorer in the pioneering ‘A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission’ to that of an historian capturing the demise of Quarry Hill Flats, or the creators of the otherworldly Yorkshire Scarecrows which Geoff Dyer describes as among photography’s most humorous and strange portraits. Peter continues to intrigue us with details of human interest which are intensely personal and somehow timeless, through photography, words, and the objects he has collected over a lifetime.

This publication presents Peter’s photographs to a new generation and shares his unique and compelling vision which has the changing face of Leeds at its heart; its history as witnessed through the ruins of its buildings, the citizens who have lived here and remembering those who stand proudly in their place of work. In the words of Val Williams, Peter is ‘a narrator of how we were, a chaser of a disappearing world’. Nothing lasts forever.

Jane Bhoyroo

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Memento Mori: The Flats at Quarry Hill, Leeds Self Published, 1990

RRB Photobooks, May 2016

Hardcover in dust-jacket edition of 500

Softcover, card in dust-jacket

Softcover in dust-jacket edition of 3000

23 x 21 cm

23 x 21 cm

136 pages

128 pages

New corrected edition,

Foreword by Bernard Crick

reset by Alan Rutherford

Peter’s first book. Self-published with an Arts Council grant in an edition of 500 hardbacks and 3000 paperbacks. Both versions had a dust-wrapper. Memento Mori combined original documents, archival photographs, oral history and Peter’s own colour photographs. RRB Photobooks published a new paperback edition with dust-wrapper in 2016. The text was reset by Alan Rutherford and there is a new Afterword by Peter.

“Quarry Hill was right there in the middle of Leeds and by 1936 had become a giant architectural wonder totally alien to the ‘Loiners’ of Leeds. I often walked through the flats and when demolition was imminent I started to photograph the demise of Quarry Hill Flats – for five years! Interest began to grow as to what was so special about the flats and why they were got rid of so completely. Leeds City Art Gallery had just been refurbished, and they chose my photographs for the opening exhibition and the launch of the book ‘Memento Mori’, with thanks to the Arts Council. And Quarry Hill Flats have been with me ever since.”

Peter Mitchell

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Strangely Familiar Nazraeli, July 2013 Hardcover, blue cloth 28.6 x 30.5 cm 68 pages Introduction by Martin Parr

Twenty-three years after Peter’s first book, this selection of photographs was published in a series edited by Martin Parr.

1500 copies were printed. RRB Photobooks created a special edition of sorts by adding an original signed print to a limited number of copies.

“Martin Parr (who was forever promoting new photography) had been commissioned by Nazraeli Press to select ten photographers, and I was one of them. I designed the book, which was rejected, and then all went quiet for two years. Almost midnight when the phone rang and Chris was liking the images and thought they should be all of Leeds. Oh – and he had left Portland and now had an olive farm near Los Angeles and publishing was done in China. I went over and we had a terrific time and at the end of the week he asked me what the badge was I was wearing. It was my Winged Cobra logo with the slogan ‘We are all heroes of Today’. ‘Let’s stamp them on the book’ he said. A set of rubber stamps were sent to China and the books looked terrific and Chris said ‘brilliant, they will sell straight away’. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because each customer will be buying a limited edition of one’. And he was right!”

Peter Mitchell

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Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody RRB Photobooks, June 2015 Hardcover, blue cloth in dustjacket 23 x 28 cm 132 pages First Edition of 950 copies including 50 Special Edition copies in Slipcase Each copy included a 5x5” signed print

RRB Photobooks’ first publication, Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody is an autobiography told through inanimate objects silently observed by scarecrows. Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody boldly marks the passing of time by weaving images of these surreal totems in the landscape amongst those of objects with sentimental value. The combination of personal belongings with scarecrows highlights the quirky and eccentric view Peter has shown throughout his work – the humdrum and mundane becomes weird and wonderful, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. This is a document of both the literal and the allegorical: blank scarecrow faces in empty landscapes with muted skies connect to a bleak pastoral sensibility, while horded things map out Peter’s life chronologically. He says: “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.” The book employs hand-made fonts combined with narratives purposefully jangling and rattling the viewer along with this eclectic panoply of possessions.

“My partner has a cottage in North Yorkshire and much earlier three of us (Martin Parr, Nigel Inglis and myself) had an exhibition at Impressions Gallery under the title of ‘The Derwent’. By coincidence the river that runs through Sheila’s garden, the river Severn, also runs into The Derwent. Originally I only liked places with pavements but Sinnington changed my mind. Almost by accident I seemed to have accumulated several tribes of scarecrows, (they vary from 1975) and RRB Photobooks wanted to use them – but how?

Eventually, after much psychology and purpose, we decided on a biography and let the characters natter on about me and the state I’m in. So it was out with my gask mask, ‘Eccles’ miners lamp and baker’s bun and hello Manchester. The scarecrows seemed to me like old friends and after publication it was as if they had all decided to steal away forever.”

Peter Mitchell

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A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission

“Val Williams asked me to do a show and because I like astronomy, and the Americans had just landed on Mars. I thought I would

RRB Photobooks, April 2017

Viking 4 Lander and got the reply that if I sent enough money they might do something – but they could straightaway send me

Hardcover, navy cloth in printed dustwrapper

pictures of what was up there already, if I liked. I stuck with my own Viking 4 title and designed mounts for Earth and Mars so that

24.8 x 27.2 cm

it looked all the same expedition. Quite early on my photographs were taken as being the works of Martians and a public school

88 pages

hired the exhibition from the Arts Council to lecture on the solar system. The school sent a complaint saying the standard of

First Edition including Special Edition of 100 copies

photography must have been taken by a 50 year old man with a ‘Kodak’ camera. I am that man!”

do something about the wonder of the planet Earth compared with the dusty deserts of Mars. I asked NASA for pictures from the

With an Essay by Val Williams French Edition published by Editions Clementine de la Feronniere

Peter Mitchell

A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission features photos and portraits, taken in Leeds in the 1970s. The pictures show 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 puzzlement. Peter’s groundbreaking show was first presented at the Impressions Gallery of Photography, York, in November 1979, and more recently at Arles in 2016.

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Early Sunday Morning

“This is one of those occasions when you think I’m a bit doubtful with these negatives whilst others are claiming wonderful things.

Rudi and John Myers worked on the selection and the title was theirs having heard me say ‘I get up early on a Sunday so I can climb

RRB Photobooks, June 2020

RRB Photobooks, December 2023

Hardcover, grey-green board

Softcover, printed card

25 x 30 cm

16.5 x 19.8 cm

180 pages

176 pages

First Edition of 1500 copies

First Edition of 1300 copies

including special edition of 100 copies

includes unlimited Print Edition

Each copy included a 5x5” signed print

on the demolition and the cars and trucks will have gone’. The book was 170 pages thick, very heavy and was being guarded by the ‘Winged Cobra logo’ and John Dyson & Sons (clocks and watches) across the road. Come 2023 I’m at a Photo Festival at Leeds University. It was crowded and signing and selling and I sold the last copy of ‘Early Sunday Morning’. So what does this kid know about taste and art?”

Peter Mitchell

Early Sunday Morning is made up of over 90 images, each one selected from a cache of five hundred negatives which had previously sat unseen for over 30 years. Edited and sequenced by John Myers, it shows a different Leeds from Mitchell’s earlier publications. It is 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. The book reveals the layers of the city’s history, exposed by the changes to the urban landscape that epitomised the 1970s and 80s. Hundred-year-old terraces and cobbled streets sit flanked by concrete flats, with newly cleared ground to either side, presented with Mitchell’s typical graphic framing.

‘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’ Geoff Dyer

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Epilogue RRB Photobooks, December 2021 Hardcover, sand cloth 28 x 30 cm 100 pages First Edition of 900 copies includes Special Edition of 100 copies Preface by Rudi Thoemmes

“Peter is quite a brilliant chronicler of life: not just as a photographer but as a social historian and storyteller. Quarry Hill provided him with the perfect ingredients. He combined original documents, archival photographs, oral history, his own observations on utopias and his photographs into what has become a classic recipe of how to use different aspects to illustrate the complexities of change and failure.

Within photography scholarship there is a standard interpretation of Peter’s work as “charming”, best put by Martin Parr in his introduction to Strangely Familiar (2013): ‘The full charm of Mitchell’s work is embodied in images of shops and factories with owners or work force standing proudly in front of their businesses’. Peter’s work about Quarry Hill not only deviates from this but demolishes that particular interpretation of his achievements. Peter himself is indeed the most charming and humble

This book is a sequel to Peter Mitchell’s 1990 publication Memento Mori, which documented the dramatic impact of the Quarry Hill

photographer, but these pictures are anything but charming, and they show a much more serious aspect and intent at work”

redevelopment project in Leeds. Epilogue contains over 40 new images showing the abandonment and subsequent demolition of

(Preface, Rudi Thoemmes).

the site, adding a poignant final chapter to the 1990 publication and its later facsimile edition.

“I photograph dying buildings and Quarry Hill was terminal by the time I got to it. Times change and I know there was no point in keeping Quarry Hill Flats. But what it stood for might have been worth keeping. An epilogue is a speech or short poem addressed to the spectators by one of the actors after a play is over. Put simply, it is praise for a good performance. Quarry Hill Flats’ performance was short by architectural standards but it still packed a punch. And though ‘Epilogue’ sounds like the ultimate end, it’s not. It will be back – probably with the ghost of Diana Dors, who in my diary for 1957 says ‘She claims to be tired of being a blonde bombshell! Surely not!”

Peter Mitchell

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Collected Prints and Ephemera Peter Mitchell’s life and work is not only collected in the pages of his publications. His archive is made up of thousands of negatives, prints, graphic design, typography and objects, spilling out from the ‘Winged Cobra Workshop’ through his home.

The collected objects, combining modern prints and newly unearthed negatives with childhood magazines and toys, artwork

by Mitchell’s partner Sheila and items scavanged from across his home city of Leeds, including pieces of the Ghost train that appears on the cover of this book, form a biography of sorts, forming a picture of the man behind the photographs. They have a life of their own, ‘Everyday objects with the figure of everyman’, in them we see our own memories as much as those of the place they inhabit.

Though I don’t collect anything I have accrued a strange range of objects that at times almost speak to me. There’s no gold, designer labels or exquisite craftsmanship or rare value attached to these things but these things are very attached to me and more, they have done great service in their usefulness to me.

Peter Mitchell

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‘This is where you’re going to have trouble really, because several

Popular in the Age of Reason, then again with 20th century post-

Mitchell looks amazed when I tell him, but then in A New Refutation

experiences played their part in his ‘downfall’, as he wrote, imagine

people started to do something on me and then they sort of got lost,’

modernism, they suggest alternative perspectives and approaches,

Borges thinks of coincidences as examples of non-linear time. ‘Let us

seeing all that as a kid.

Peter Mitchell tells me early on in our long looping conversation,

gathering up bursts of facts rather than progressing along a trajectory.

consider a life in which repetitions abound: my life, for instance,’ he

at his house in Leeds. It makes me laugh but it doesn’t fill me with

They also suggest a way to think about Mitchell and his work; his 1990

writes, and Mitchell has also encountered many coincidences. As a

Elsewhere Mitchell has written about his father’s love of his garden

confidence, though perhaps it’s best understood as an insight.

photobook, Memento Mori – The Flats at Quarry Hill, Leeds freely

young man he bought a winged cobra brooch at the Portobello Road

and chickens, but this passion must also have helped supplement

Mitchell’s work is all about trying to find one’s bearings, it seems to

mixes chronologies, for example, combining his photographs with

flea market, wearing it for years before re-finding it on a warehouse

their food. Rationing remained in place long after the war, in fact

me, and the difficulty – or even impossibility - of doing so in a universe

archive images, diary entries, newspaper reports, and architectural

in Leeds. Photographing a group of women in front of this flamboyant

bread rationing was only introduced in 1946. So ravaged was Britain’s

beyond human comprehension. There’s a streak of absurdism in his

plan. A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission plays fast and

workplace, he later discovered he’d shot two of them elsewhere at

economy, that food rationing only stopped in 1954, when Mitchell was

strange and familiar world, an awareness of alternative readings,

loose with location, meanwhile, mixing documentary shots of Leeds

another time. ‘For me, photography is all about coincidences,’ he told

around 12 years old. ‘When I look back, I love to think of myself as

or hubris, or the ends of Empires and lives; the same sensitivity also

with other English cities plus images from Mars.

The Guardian in 2022.

a Sixties hippie,’ he told the Financial Times in 2017. ‘But I really am

suggests something about photography, and how we understand

a child of the 1950s. Sheila won’t believe me that bread used to be

images. Maybe it’s ok to get lost with Mitchell. In fact maybe that’s

The title of the latter is a reference to Jorge Luis Borges’ essay A

From my vantage point 80 years on, I can tell you that Catford is a

better than thinking you know where you are.

New Refutation of Time, which was written between 1944 and 46,

bit down-at-heel, once bordering on genteel but long since faded

and which draws on 17th and 18th century Empiricism to deny there’s

and [relatively] cheap. Another famous former inhabitant is Spike

As a child Mitchell was a fan of I-Spy books, which were distributed

It does make charting his work daunting though; it’s not obvious what

an external temporal flow. Borges’ essay proceeds in a playful way,

Milligan, who grew up near Mitchell ten years before; ‘God Save the

by The News Chronicle paper; based around certain topics, such as

to include or discard from the continuum of his life. As he implies

though he concludes that denying temporal succession, the self, or

King / But God help the rest of us,’ wrote Milligan in his poem “Catford

London or roads or ponds, they challenged users to tick off certain

with the title of his 2015 book, Some Thing Means Everything to

the astronomical universe, ‘are secret consolations’. Post-modernism

1933”, before setting up The Goon Show, which inspired Monty

sights. They gave a training in looking, that’s to say, but they also

Somebody, one man’s junk can easily be another one’s gold. Some

and wacky early novels suggest ways to understand understanding,

Python, which in turn inspired Mitchell too. Catford has never been

arranged their own order of things, a mapping backed up by a clear

Thing Means Everything gathers photographs of the apparently

to see that our maps are contingent and could be done differently.

at the heart of the establishment, which is why it has perhaps always

hierarchy. They were dreamt up by a former headmaster styled ‘the

had an alternative, bohemian air. It wasn’t the worst hit during the war

Big Chief I-Spy’; members of the I-Spy tribe had a secret code, which

random items he’s collected over the years in fact, a vast number of which still live in his house. We speak upstairs on the first floor,

To start somewhere – to start like a picaresque novel – Peter Mitchell

but still many homes were bombed, including two major incidents

Mitchell still remembers. Mitchell was a keen scribbler, he says,

because the rooms underneath are floor-to-ceiling full of stuff. But

was born in Eccles, near Manchester in 1943. He’s not really a

either end of Mitchell’s childhood road.

writing for the school magazine and starting a diary when he was

the front cover of Some Thing Means Everything features a map of

northerner though. His family ‘evacuated to London because of the

the stars which, like any map, picks out certain salient facts; it’s

war’ he tells me – mysteriously, given that people generally evacuated

Mitchell must have grown up seeing these sites, because it was years

books. ‘I used to write up to 1000 words a night, personal stuff,’ he

partial but also comfortingly clear.

out of the city. His father was a painter-decorator, a union man and

before they were cleared; he tells me he’s a child of the 1940s and

tells me. ‘Well this was a way, I now see, this was a way of coping.’

‘outspoken socialist’; his mother was Italian, though he tells me she

50s, and remembers seeing the old air raid shelters being destroyed,

Val Williams has described Mitchell as ‘a proponent of the picaresque’,

was ‘only Italian as a baby’. Born in Rome and therefore registered as

and in Some Thing Means Everything includes a photograph of a gas

His childhood is amazingly fresh in his mind, a topic he circles back to

in his book A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, 2017; he’s

an alien in the Second World War, she had to check in weekly with the

mask kept all these years. ‘…gas masks and goggles were standard

in his work and our conversation; he shows me old family photographs,

a proponent of the episodic, that’s to say, of the usually humorous

police. The Mitchells landed in Abbotshall Road, Catford, south-east

playthings throughout the forties and early fifties,’ he writes. I imagine

him cute and his mother strikingly handsome. His playthings remain

early novels which typically follow a roguish working-class hero’s

London, by coincidence just down the road from my house.

growing up in this way must have been striking, a lived experience

alive for him too, in the way that dolls and bears are alive for kids;

of the adults getting it catastrophically wrong; if Milligan’s wartime

one of his favourite toys was a little rubber frog, he tells me, which

adventures, but circle round rather than following a linear path.

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rationed.’

six. He’s kept up this diary ever since, and used extracts from it in his

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you could animate into life. ‘There was a craze for these things,’ he

shop up the road that sold condoms. There’s a photograph of it in A

It also strikes me as funny that Mitchell worked for the British

from Hornsea, but Mitchell was also into screen printing, that’s to say

tells me. ‘If you squeeze a bubble in your pocket the frog jumps.’ ‘I have

New Refutation, titled “Mrs McArthy & her daughter. Saturday 7 June

government, at that time losing its Empire but little of its self-

into making this kind of poster or leaflet, the alternative news and

accrued a strange range of objects that at times almost speak to me,’

1975”. Sangley Road, London. ‘It had a window full of skeletons and

appointed importance; party to some of the Establishment’s inner

ads. He was also studying typography and graphic design, like Nick

he writes in Some Thing Means Everything. Many of these toys are still

things like that,’ he tells. ‘Memento Mori, yeah go have some fun boys,

workings, he even had to sign the Official Secrets Act. ‘To this day

Wright, one of Hornsea’s radical student leaders. I imagine he was

knocking around in his house, gathering dust downstairs while he’s

because one day you’re dead.’ One day not only can your findings be

ministry values have stayed with me,’ he writes in Some Thing Means

well-versed in the protests, though he gently satirises them too,

decamped to the first floor or his partner’s home in the country.

overturned, perhaps, they can die with you.

Everything, which seems surprising, but then there’s an establishment

writing ‘I had a terrific time there but the exact nature of the uprising

edge to his ‘Winged Cobra Workshop’, and he gave it a rubber stamp.

escapes me these days,’ in Some Thing Means Everything. Perhaps if

It could look like hoarding, but then who’s to say what’s important and

Skeletons are an ongoing theme in Mitchell’s work, in fact, popping up

As with setting up his own collection, there’s a sense he’s at the centre

you’re really anti-establishment you’re wary of all politics, even those

what’s junk, what’s a random ragbag and what’s an important archive.

in an x-ray at the end of Memento Mori, and an unpublished series on

of his own world, setting up his own archives and institutions.

campaigns that question authority.

His grew up close to the Horniman Museum, an extremely eccentric

a Ghost Train. We forget about it day-to-day, but this symbol of death

19th century collection given an air of respectability by virtue of its

always lurks within, inside under the flesh. Actually Mitchell’s father

These so-called ministry values also shade 1960s counterculture

Studying typography seems interesting too, as it’s the art and

owner’s wealth. A New Refutation includes a photograph of a class of

died unexpectedly young, suddenly having a heart attack at the age

though, into the spoofing that runs through Monty Python’s Ministry

technique of selecting and displaying type; it’s concerned with how

kids in front of the Horniman Museum, which Mitchell shot in 1979. ‘I

of 61; somehow suddenly he’s talking to me about euthanasia, about

of Silly Walks. ‘By yet another weird coincidence I worked on the

words look, rather than what they say. It’s a look at the signifier rather

loved this place as a nipper and still do,’ he writes. Though the insides

how ‘there’s quite a bit of shouting that goes on, it’s not as easy as it

drawings for a large town and ten years later not only do I live there but

than what’s signified, that’s to say, detaching the physical sign from

have changed and not for the better.’

sounds because the body is resolute.’ Val Williams writes that Mitchell

Leeds seems to have adopted ideas from the actual report,’ Mitchell

what its arbitrarily come to communicate. It suggests a collapse of

is ‘perhaps not as jolly as we thought’, and it seems to me he’s not jolly

writes in Some Thing Means Everything, his tongue seemingly firmly

values, in which one set of meanings could easily be replaced. If, as

The Horniman includes a hilariously mis-stuffed walrus, over-padded

at all. His life is shot through with awareness of death, like the black

in cheek.

Roland Barthes suggested in 1961, the photograph is ‘a message

by a Victorian taxidermist; A New Refutation also includes a shot of

humour of Spike Milligan or any other good absurdist.

a large, anatomically incorrect dinosaur model, one of several in

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without a code’, perhaps it isn’t so different. The captions Mitchell He was also actively involved in counter-cultural activities, attending

attaches to his images are often humorous, diaristic and clearly subjective, they suggest another caption might easily do too.

Crystal Palace, another park in south-east London. ‘I remember this

‘Everyone left school at 15/16’, Mitchell writes in Some Thing Means

CND rallies in Trafalgar Square; by 1967 when he was about 24,

creature when it used to stalk through the dense undergrowth with

Everything – after which he headed north to Hampstead Heath,

he’d had enough and decided to ditch the steady job in favour of art

its skin all peeling off,’ he writes in A New Refutation. ‘The nice thing

then a bohemian centre rather than unaffordably posh. He lived in

college. Winning a place at Hornsea College of Art in Crouch End,

Perhaps this sense of contingency was further suggested by travelling,

about it is that Waterhouse Hawkings (with few bones to go on) didn’t

circumstances that sound straightened but fun, sharing a house – and

north London, he arrived just as the students were radicalising.

because by this time Mitchell was taking trips across Europe; in 1969

get these animals right, thus making them truly fantastic creatures.’

one toilet – with five others, and training as a cartographic draftsman,

Smaller scale but not unlike “les envenements” in France, inspired by

he hitched across the US with his girlfriend, at the height of the hippy

His caption labels these creatures “Kings of the Earth – Do They Rule

working for the civil service in the Ministry of Housing and Local

Marxism and the Situationists, this movement culminated in a sit-in in

movement. In 1972 he left art college and visited friends who were

For Ever? London, 1979”. Science and evidence can get you so far, it

Government in Whitehall. The latter also strikes me as interesting and

1968. A poster from the fall-out has made it into Mitchell’s collection,

squatting in Leeds, never left, and settled into half the whole house

seems, but ultimately you could still be making it up. And any good

relevant. He learned to make maps and architectural drawings, a skill

featuring a skeleton, and anti-establishment satire; “Harold Skeleton

I visited. Getting a job as a truck driver to pay the bills, he planned to

scientific theory can be overturned.

and interest he’s retained, with Memento Mori including blueprint

and his company of performing public relations officers presents Mr

become a fine-art silk-screen maker; setting up The Winged Cobra

plans of the Quarry Hill flats, and Some Thing Means Everything a neat

Loadov Fibbs,” reads the text, accompanying a cartoony man in a suit.

Workshop, he gave it the motto ‘We Are All Heroes of Today’. The

Mitchell’s childhood segued into a happy youth; he tells me about

drawing of his radically messy house. Stripping away details to show

scooter trips, about Catford cinemas showing risqué flicks, and a

the bare bones of a place, these plans are another kind of skeleton.

sentiment is both egalitarian and a riff on ‘Homes for Heroes’, the call The poster is attributed to George Snow, a student eventually expelled

for decent housing post-World War One.

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The early 1970s were a particular time in Britain, the cultural

Hooke et al’, as he writes in Some Thing Means Everything. The text

His exhibition A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission,

people, shown small in the frame in front of their workplaces or

radicalism that had seeped into Hornsea also leading to political

reads:

organised by Val Williams at Impressions Gallery in York in 1979, was

homes. His shots are early examples of ‘environmental portraits’,

the first colour show in a British photography gallery; it also included

of the individual enmeshed in their surroundings, and as such they

images from Mars, beamed to earth by the Viking landers. Mitchell

suggest people can be subject to forces bigger than them, such as de-

was inspired to add space charts to his own photographs, fake co-

industrialisation, or the destruction of Leeds. But they also suggest

ordinates and measurements applying an alien-eye, quasi scientific

that an objective eye is a fiction, that we each have our own subjective

view to his photographs. ‘This show was so far ahead of its time that

view, whichever side of the camera we are.

clashes; the miners and railway workers went on strike, and by 1973

An

the Conservative government was rationing power via a three-day

Impression of the Yorkshire City of

week. By 1974’s general election, the Tory’s slogan was ‘Who governs

LEEDS

Britain?’, and Mitchell has described this period as like war time.

BEING

Maybe it was particularly shocking in Leeds. ‘When I arrived in Leeds in the early seventies [slum] clearances seemed to be in progress

A plain persons Guide to the discovering and navigating of the City

no one knew exactly what to say or how to react, apart from with total

over the entire city,’ he writes in Memento Mori.

By the less dramatic but equally interesting Features of the

bewilderment,’ Parr wrote for Photoworks in 2013.

have the eccentric personal feel of an 18th century journal or diary.

Landscape.

And Mitchell had a ringside seat, his trucking job taking him all over

Combining his photographs with the Mars landers’, Mitchell says

‘St Botolph’s Graveyard, London, 1979,’ reads one. ‘Working class

the city; he started to shoot what remained of these ‘dying buildings’,

There is much more on this title page, around his ‘PHOTOGRAPHS in

something about the camera’s vision, and it seems to me A New

heroes’ graves. Pictures like this come about through having been a

finding that ‘Sunday proved the traffic-free moments to be more

Colour and Personal Observations’, and the idea was that ‘there are

Refutation refutes that apparently objective vision. The camera puts

compulsive I-Spyer in one’s infancy.’ Mitchell and his subjects aren’t

exploratory,’ as he writes of Early Sunday Morning. The title of this

all these little tiny things that you notice when you’re a truck driver

those who use it at a distance, removing them from the frame and

objective, and they aren’t objects or aliens. They’re individuals and

book is pleasingly cyclical, as in Borges, though the images suggest a

and they are just as interesting as all this other stuff in the world’, he

throwing them into observation; Martin Jay, born a year after Mitchell,

he’s spoken with many of them, his captions recording most of their

downward spiral, showing buildings on their way out, and sometimes

told It’s Nice That. Again, Mitchell insisted his vision was valid; he also

spoke of ‘scopic regimes’ in the 1980s, the ‘distanciating vision’

names and a few details. ‘Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a

the people associated with them. Many of the shots are of old pubs

linked with Enlightenment Empiricism, based on direct observation

developed in the Enlightenment and materialised via photography.

river that carries me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles

and small businesses, with appealing painted signs and facades.

and therefore scientific but also subjective. Mitchell created a map or

For Jay this vision relates to a colonial way of seeing, of perceiving the

me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire,’

a guide to Leeds, that’s to say but happily pointed out its partiality.

world as resources; a similar idea features in John Berger’s Ways of

writes Borges in A New Refutation of Time. ‘The world, alas, is real; I,

Knowing something, after all, isn’t the same as knowing everything.

Seeing, broadcast on BBC2 in 1972, which suggests images as a type

alas, am Borges.’

By this time Mitchell had got to know Sheila Ross, who ran the education department of Leeds City Art Gallery; in 1974 he walked into her

138

Mitchell also included lengthy captions with his images, which

of stock-taking. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, published in 1975,

gallery with some images printed in Boots [the chemist], suggesting

The exhibition was a success, a curator telling Mitchell ‘I like the

goes further, considering the invention of the Panopticon in the 18th

As with Mitchell’s childhood toys and collection of stuff, it seems

she might be interested. 1975 was the European Architectural Year,

photographs – forget the screen prints’, and from then on he took his

century, and the imposition of a controlling surveillance view.

places are as alive as people to him. Mitchell references the name of

which aimed to develop a policy to protect architectural heritage, and

images more seriously, starting a long project on Leeds’ ailing Quarry

Ross thought his images would be an interesting counterpoint to the

Hill modernist estate. Mitchell says it was good timing, that his moment

Mitchell’s photographs evoke this vision, and he shot them from the

includes his photograph of the Quarry Hill estate in Leeds, soon to be

main exhibition, which showed Leeds’ Victorian and city heritage. She

arrived just as ‘the UK had discovered photography as an art form’,

top of a step ladder, which adds to their sense of a survey; he also

demolished but given a voice. Attaching morse code flags to its once-

arranged Mitchell’s first solo show.

but he wasn’t exactly in step with it. The 1970s were a Golden Age for

created quasi-official documents for the exhibition, giving visitors

proud poles, Mitchell ventriloquises its farewell, ‘GOODBYE WORLD’.

British documentary photography, and one of its main proponents,

a ‘Mission Control’ entrance pass, stamped with the year and The

His approach seems close to a kind of animism, which considers the

Mitchell gave the exhibition an anachronistic title and printed the

Martin Parr, is one of Mitchell’s biggest champions; Parr describes

Winged Cobra emblem. But this entrance pass seems to me another

environment in terms of living beings, not objects or resources.

leaflet himself in The Winged Cobra Workshop, choosing ‘the style

Mitchell as ‘a fine documentary photographer’ in his introduction to

satirical gesture, one more concerned with anti-establishment than

Perhaps it’s not surprising that another long-term project looks at

of English Enlightenment typographic title page – Newton, Harvey,

Strangely Familiar but while he is, he’s also unorthodox.

imposing an authority, and Mitchell’s images also sometimes include

scarecrows, inanimate figures which seem nonetheless convincingly,

a boulder on Mars for example, ‘Big Val’, and A New Refutation also

139

alive. ‘To me they’re friends,’ writes Mitchell, in a collection of these

and our lives.

photographs published as postcards in 2015; these images also

tomb, and is used under a photograph of Mitchell’s own studio, in

show. Where once he was in the small gallery, an interesting addition

very same house where I’m chatting with him. Mitchell is such an

to the main event, he’s now the main event.

punctuate Some Thing Means Everything. Mitchell’s photographs of

Mitchell suggests a certain contingency to reality, ‘the microbes of

individual, or at least tries to be, and the work he made in this studio

the Ghost Train occupy similar ground, wild rides on which inanimate

time’ are at work, he says, and all that is solid melting. Visiting on 24

helped him speak.

objects can seem disconcertingly menacing. Ghost stories and horror

March 1978 he finds the Quarry Hill site is ‘mostly cleared, does look

are a point at which established reason can seem to break down; in

massive but its unique presence has long gone. It’s like the back lot

This essay is my particular take on Mitchell, the one that make sense

and now it is gone”, or “No Thing Lasts Forever”, which could refer to

the 18th century, the Age of Reason tipped over into the Sublime,

of a film set’; the unique presence is another near personification,

to me here and now. Another course could easily be charted. But

what he has photographed, or himself, or his work; far from being the

those scary, awe-inspiring moments in which we perceive the world

suggesting a more respectful way to interact with this beast, but

perhaps the conclusion is less important than the search because,

establishment, he suggests, he’ll soon be on his way out. ‘Time is a fire

far beyond human attempts at mapping it.

the film set suggests something temporary. There’s a feeling that

as in existentialism, it’s about looking for meaning, not finding a

that consumes, but I am the fire,’ wrote Borges in A New Refutation of

nothing is really for sure, despite the confidence of authorities who

meaning per se. Maybe this is where Mitchell’s diaries have been

Time; ‘Nothing beside remains,’ wrote Shelley in .

Early 19th century writers such Shelley, and especially Mary Shelley,

say estates should be constructed, then equally confidently say they

helpful, materialising his particular perspective on the world; I too am

with her pitiful Frankenstein’s monster, considered moments in which

should be demolished.

an inveterate diary-writer, and have been since I was a kid. Perhaps

Born into the destruction of World War Two, Mitchell lived to see the

it is harder to get lost when you’re following your own nose, though in

sci-fi optimism of the 1951 Festival of Britain, and the dismantling

my case this path led towards Catford, not away.

of the British Empire; the launch of Concorde in 1969, and the UK’s

order falls apart; for them this could be reason, but it could also be

But it’s not a position he easily accepts. Mitchell’s suggested titles for this retrospective are “Going, Going, Gone”, or “Once you saw it -

political order. And that’s the key point to Memento Mori, Mitchell’s

It’s left to the freethinkers to voice something different, to be out of

magnum opus, which is ostensibly about the Quarry Hill flats, built

step with the times and rewarded with the seemingly eccentric; as

with great optimism and fanfare in the 1930s then infamous by the

Mitchell records in the book, ‘Alison Ravetz, lecturer in architectural

Writing has become my way, but I can see photography is also useful

Leeds shows the supersonic airliner in its heyday, poised to break new

1950s and demolished by the late 1970s. Actually it’s about hubris,

studies at Leeds Polytechnic, says some pioneers and activists

to document your own time and place. Quite literally recording your

boundaries in our mastery of time and space, depicted via cartoony,

and the endings of eras. Bernard Crick’s foreword includes Shelley’s

stubbornly remember and maintain that it was, and is, and could be

perspective at a particular juncture, it plots your position in time and

triumphant wallpaper. His image shows this wallpaper tired and sad,

poem, “Ozymandias the Egyptian”, describing a fallen, once-great

something more successful.’ Mitchell, for his part, carefully gathers

space. So though photography has been linked with ‘distanciating

however, soon to be destroyed just as its referent. Mitchell went on

ruler; Shelley wrote it just after the Peterloo Massacre, in which a

evidence suggesting this scheme was never brilliant or terrible, but

vision’, with a scientific, or surveying, or even colonial view, for

Concorde in 2003, he tells me, when it was nearing the close of its life.

British Empire high on its own power mowed down innocent men,

always somewhere in between. The creation of meaning isn’t easy,

me Mitchell’s work suggests something different. It demonstrates

‘I dressed up, but everyone else was getting drunk and couldn’t stay

women and children protesting for the right to vote.

particularly with photographs, messages without a code, so Mitchell

everyone is a watcher with their own view, even if they’re scarecrows

upright,’ he tells. ‘It was like the Empire ending.’

attaches his own readings, in captions, titles and texts. In a wider

or buildings. It suggests various subjectivities, an anarchic working-

sense though, he’s suggesting you think for yourself.

class boy as much as the British government or NASA.

quotes Burns’ “To A Mouse”, which points out that the schemes of both

We are all heroes of today, as his motto puts it, so you can assess

Mitchell is now part of the photographic establishment. A New

mice and men ‘gang aft a-gley’. Meanwhile an illustration of a sundial

these fragments yourself; and his wider oeuvre includes other, similar

Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission was shown at Arles in 2016,

on the back cover bears the motto SOLI DEO OMNIS GLORIAT, [TO GOD

encouragements. ‘To thine own self be true’ reads a piece of pottery

RRB Photobooks has been publishing his work since 2015, and he’s

ALONE BE THE GLORY OF ALL] plus ‘BOAST not thyself of tomorrow

shown in Some Thing Means Everything; ‘I was an astute individual

featured by newspapers such as The Guardian and the FT. He has

for on thine eyelids is the shadow of death’. Both texts suggest a need

who spoke with his own mouth,’ reads a quote in the same book. The

a retrospective at Leeds Art Gallery – something he’s particularly

for humility, an awareness of the human frailty that finishes empires

latter is written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, taken from Tutankhamun’s

pleased with, he tells me, because that’s where he had his first solo

Mitchell for his part includes a poem by Robbie Burns in Memento

de-industrialisation. One of Mitchell’s photographs of the Quarry Hill,

Mori, the Scottish poet who influenced Shelley and more; Mitchell

140

141

142

143

Captions

45

Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody, RRB Photobooks, 2015, p65-66

3

Francis Gavan, Ghost Train Man, Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, 1977

47

Scarecrow 11

6

Adler Gabriele 25 Portable, 1984

48

Scarecrow 16

9

X-rays, from Memento Mori 1990 & 2016

49

Scarecrow 38

10i

Memento Mori, self-published 1990 & RRB Photobooks, 2016, cover

51

Scarecrow 28

10ii

Memento Mori, self-published 1990 & RRB Photobooks, 2016, p30-31

53

Scarecrow 26

11

Memento Mori, self-published 1990 & RRB Photobooks, 2016, p84-85

55

Scarecrow 32

13

Noel and his Lads, Demolition Men, Neilson House, Quarry Hill, Leeds, Summer 1978

56

Scarecrow 57

15

York and Moynihan Houses, Quarry Hill Flats, from the south-east, 1978

57

Scarecrow 20

16

The Garden of Rest (a.k.a. The Village Green), Quarry Hill Flats, looking east, 1978

59

Scarecrow 30

17

Thoresby House, Quarry Hill Flats, from the west, 1978

61

Entrance badge for A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, 1979

19

Neilson House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

62i

A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, RRB Photobooks, April 2017, Dustwrapper

21

Wright House from the east, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

62ii

A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, RRB Photobooks, April 2017, p16-17

23

Knitted Hasselblad camera. Sheila Ross, 1979

63

A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, RRB Photobooks, April 2017, p30-31

24

John Dyson & Sons, Clockmakers, Lower Briggate, Leeds, Winter 1973

65

Scott, Dean, Neil & Gaudy the dog, 40 Westmoreland Street, Sheffield, 1978

25

Strangely Familiar, Nazraeli, 2013, cover

67

Two anonymous ladies, Tivoli Cinema, Acre Road, Leeds. Taken from Sisson’s Lane, 1976

27

Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, by the old Seacroft Chapel, York Road, Leeds, 1974

69

The people of Kingston Racing Motors, Olinda terrace, Leeds, 1975

28

Tetley Malthouse, Mill Street, junction of Cross Mill Street, Leeds, Winter 1973

70

Eric Massheder, Vulcan Street, Leeds, 1975

29

Edna, George & Pat, Butchers, Waterloo Road, junction with Jack Lane, Leeds, Spring 1977

71

Bill Hemmings, Thornville Road, Sheffield, 1978

31

Francis Gavan, Ghost Train Ride, Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, Spring 1986

73

Mrs. McArthy & her daughter, 17 Sangley Road, Catford, London, 1975

33

‘Rave On’, Harehills Terrace, corner of Elford Road, Leeds, 1970s

74

Opticians, London, 1975

35

Sir Yank’s Records (& Heavy Disco), 49 Gathorne Street, Leeds, Summer 1976

75

Mr. Costas, 17B Stroud Green Road, London, 1979

36

The Racing Pigeon Shop, 12 Blake Grove, Leeds, Summer 2009

77

ABC (Aerated Bread Company offices), 17-21 Camden Road, London, 1979

37

Grimes & Wood, Motor Engineers, Brumfits Yard, Craven Road, Leeds, Autumn 1979

78

Ready mixed Concrete Ltd, Elland Road, Leeds, 1977

39

Trinity Methodist Church, Rounday Road, Leeds, Autumn 1978

79

The Sir Yank’s Heavy Disco, Harehills Avenue, Leeds, 1978

41

Francis Gavan, Ghost Train Ride, Pottery Fields, Leeds, Spring 2006

81

Max Babbin, 2A Vulcan Street, Leeds, 1979

43

Milk jug. Devon Motto Ware, 1952

83

Leeds General Infirmary clock, W. Potts & Sons Ltd. c.1900

44i

Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody, RRB Photobooks, 2015, dustjacket

84i

Early Sunday Morning, RRB Photobooks, 2020, cover

44ii

5x5” print in negative bag, with hand-made font sticker, included with Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody,

84ii

5x5” print in negative bag, included with Early Sunday Morning, RRB Photobooks, 2020

RRB Photobooks, 2015

85

Early Sunday Morning, RRB Photobooks, 2020, p66-67

87

The Sun Hotel, 134 Church Street, Hunslet, Leeds, late 1970s

125

Plimsolls silkscreen print, Peter Mitchell, 1970

88

The Queen Pub, 134 Oldfield Lane, Wortley, Leeds, 1970s

126i

Now You See Them, Soon You Won’t Exhibition poster, 1978

89

WM. Ogden & Co, 77 Kirkstall Road, Leeds, 1970s

126ii

Fragments against Ruin, Exhibition poster, 1981

91

Beetham’s Cash Stores, 98 Church Street, Hunslet, Leeds, 1970s

127i

An Impression of the Yorkshire City of Leeds, exhibition poster, 1975

92

9-17 Howden Place, Hyde Park, Leeds, 1970s

127ii

Strangely Familiar Exhibition poster, 2008

93

Westlock Grove, Leeds, 1970s

128

Aerial view of the Quarry Hill Flats, 1938

95

Concorde Wallpaper, Devon Road, 1970s

129

‘How many Aunties?’, Back Hares Mount, Leeds, 1978

97

Nosey Twat, 8 Sackville Street, Leeds, 1980s

130

Mrs. Clayton and Mrs. Collins, Summer, 1974

98

Billboard on the side of the Pavillion Cinema, Stanningly Road at junction of Half Mile Lane, Leeds, 1986

131

Construction Worker, limited edition hand-print

99

284 Burley Road, Leeds, 1970s

132i

Memento Mori, self-published 1990 & RRB Photobooks, 2016, back cover illustration

101

J Marsland and Sons Ltd, timber merchants, Lisbon Street, corner of Skinner Street, Leeds, 1970s

132ii

Quarry Hill Day, 6 March 1978. The flags read GOODBYE WORLD

103

Aerial Photographs of the Sheepscar Standing Stones

133

Memorials from fans at Elland Road, following the death of Billy Bremner, 1997

104i

Epilogue, RRB Photobooks, 2021, cover

143

The winged cobra workshop

104ii

Epilogue, RRB Photobooks, 2021, p73

105

Epilogue, RRB Photobooks, 2021, p46-47

107

Thoresby and Victoria Houses, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

108

The Kitson House telephone, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

109

Wright House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

111

Wright House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

113

York House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

114

Priestly House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

115

Priestly House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

117

Moynihan House, Quarry Hill Flats, 1978

119

Touring Crate for A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, 1979

120

Stained glass window, Sheila Ross, 1982

121i

Diaries over a long period of time, some of them

121ii

We Are All Heroes of Today, winged cobra iron-on badge, 2008

122

News Chronicle I-Spy No.11, 1954

123

Old Kent Road, London, 1979

124

Hyde Park Picture House, Brudenell Road, Leeds, 1970s

With thanks To Jane Bhoyroo, Nigel Walsh and the team at Leeds Art Gallery for their diligence and vision To Rudi Thoemmes for not retiring just yet To Tom Groves, Louis Little and Alec Aarons for their expertise To Kirsten Jensen, Erik Tarp and the team at Narayana Press for their skill and guidance To Mark Freer for his help identifying lost locations To Becky Palfery, Geoff Dyer, John Myers, Martin Parr and Val Williams for their generous support over the years To Sheila and her girls for their support and advice And of course, to Peter Mitchell for his not untested trust

Published to celebrate Peter Mitchell’s Retrospective Exhibition at the Leeds Art Gallery, May – October 2024 RRB Photobooks, May 2024 Photographs © Peter Mitchell Foreword by Jane Bhoyroo Essay © Diane Smyth Edit and Sequencing by Josephine Atkinson Design by Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski Production by Bread & Butter, Bristol UK and Fresh Aire, Leeds UK Printed at Narayana Press, Denmark ISBN 978-1-7385163-0-8 rrbphotobooks.com