In the show, each photo was limited to a grid of coordinates like the ones used by Nasa and mounted on a tin frame painted in bright red. I wanted to give the impression that the Viking Mars probes, which were launched a few years ago, had returned to Earth and their rovers were now circulating on the streets of Britain taking pictures. The shots in the show were largely from Leeds, but I also included photos taken in London and Sheffield, as well as images of Nasa from the surface of Mars. I had this idea from the gallery’s director, Val Williams, and it was very encouraging. I got a lot of sticks when the show opened, though. I worked mainly in color and, at that time, documentary photography was mostly limited to black and white. There were also objections to the way I framed the photos. But a few years ago, the renewed show was moved to Arles, where a bomb fell. ‘What are you doing?’ they shouted. “Taking a picture of the cinema,” I shouted back. ‘Why?’ they replied. ‘Left’ I had spotted this scene one fine, bright day, when I felt the need to walk to Leeds, heading south to the Beeston and Hunslet coal mining areas. I was going to a small church whose former pastor was the Reverend Charles Jenkinson, a staunch champion of the Quarry Hill apartments, the mighty Art Deco housing estate built in central Leeds. I had spent five years documenting their decline and demolition. I was hoping for a stained glass window or even a 1930s mural as a tribute to man, but I found nothing in the church. However, right across the street there was a huge cinema, the Tivoli, which at the time functioned as a bingo hall. The front was quite lost, but the back was a winner. The two ladies were chatting but, as if trying to avoid the lamppost, or perhaps to catch their breath with their shopping, they suddenly stopped and watched me with my Hasselblad, waiting for them to continue. “What are you doing?” they shouted. “I’m taking a picture of the cinema,” I shouted. “Why did he leave.” “Because I love it as it is.” And they left. Whenever the image appeared in exhibitions, the caption was always: “Two Anonymous Ladies, Leeds, 1976”. Fast forward to the beginning of this year. Rudy, my agent, receives an email from a Gloria in England. He had located the image on Instagram. The two ladies in the photo were Doreen’s mother and Sonia’s girlfriend returning from work. By that time, the images of the Vikings had been collected in a book, which Rudy published in Gloria. He came back with the revelation that I had also photographed the mill where Doreen and Sonia worked and that the couple actually appeared in the book twice. Kays Mail Order Warehouse on Marshall Street, October 1979. Photo: Peter Mitchell For me, photography is a coincidence. The Marshall Flax Mill, AKA Temple Works and later the Kays Mail Order Warehouse, was the best building in Leeds, a colossal Egyptian stone temple built in 1840 and employing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young women. I photographed it in the late 1970s as everyone watched from the night shift. One woman motioned for the others to join the queue and she could dance like an Egyptian. To get the whole facade, I had to go back to the gloomy depths of the Co-op funeral garage over the street and remove some hearses. The last time I looked at it, it was half-ruined, while the Tivoli was completely leveled a few years ago. Doreen and Sonia had a happy life and were well known at Kays Warehouse, as they are now in the art world and in my archive. Photography is the only insurance against death.
The biography of Peter Mitchell
Born: Manchester, 1943. Studied: London College of Printing and Graphic Arts / Hornsey College of Art. Influences: Bob Mazzer, Val Williams, Rudi Thoemmes, the city of Leeds. Top: “My own appearance at the Arles Photo Festival in 2016.” Low point: “Losing 540 individual negatives – although I found them two years later.” Top tip: “Travel by bus”.
