As Peter Mitchell’s retrospective opens at The Photographer’s Gallery in London, we look back at our coverage of the show’s opening in Leeds last year

As Peter Mitchell’s retrospective opens at The Photographer’s Gallery in London, we look back at our coverage of the show’s opening in Leeds last year
For more than 40 years, Peter Mitchell has been quietly making photographs of his surrounding environment in the north of England. He’s done so with the minimum of fuss, without any fanfare or desire for the public eye. Now he’s finally been awarded his first major survey show, A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, opening a week before the closing of his exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles. A recluse he may be, but Mitchell is also extremely influential. “It’s a mystery to me,” he says with a shrug, when I ask him how he’s achieved such a feat. “But there you go.”