Peter Mitchell Talk

I enjoyed today's talk from Peter Mitchell, I remember researching his work from around Leeds back in the first year, so it was a pleasure to meet him and see his own inspirations, interests and works projected in a traditional slide format for the class.

Early on in the talk he was saying that he 'Never really know what I'm doing' when photographing, 'taking photos randomly' and that to create your best work you must 'Shoot what you find interesting'. He would pick out the 'Ordinary, No Hope, Less Interesting Things' that 'Never get photographed at the time'.

Whilst looking back at his childhood images I liked the phrase families that 'snap together, stick together', and how this tradition has somewhat diminished with the arrival of camera phones, where the youth of today are 'living in the ever present', not using the photos for much other than social media, and with the loss of a phone comes the loss of images. 

There was a connection with Buddy Holly and Peter's love of photography, where he travelled to the United States to photograph where Buddy lived, photographing what relates to what he found interesting at the time, music. He even questioned if Photography was for loners? effectively an outlet for self expression on a personal level. 

There was changes taking place throughout he lived, Leeds, from telephone boxes being removed to massive apartment blocks being demolished. Leeds was progressing towards later stages of the 20th Century. I liked the simple compositions of his images, moving far away enough from his subjects to get every relevant detail in, from a flat on perspective that I will try to utilise for my Reflections Billboard project. I hope that he does end up releasing another photographic book on Leeds, as he suggested towards the end of his talk titled 'LS7 4DX'.