Kirsty MItchell - Wonderland
On March 29, we open the doors to British photographer Kirsty Mitchell's fairytale kingdom in our new major main exhibition "Wonderland". Her magical creations and forest scenes filled with flowers and beautiful nature both touch and fascinate the visitor. Welcome to Wonderland and let yourself be enchanted and enveloped by Kirsty Mitchell's dream world.
Who is the photographer Kirsty Mitchell?
'Wonderland' was launched in the summer of 2009. It was a self-funded project created in memory of the artist's mother Maureen Mitchell who died of cancer in 2008. Maureen was an English teacher for over 30 years, her life's passion was literature, storytelling and beautiful books. In the months following her family's tragic loss, Kirsty fell into a deep depression and retreated to the woods that surrounded her home. Here she began to create an alternative existence, using her camera to create images filled with fantasy, color, sadness and longing. This escapism soon evolved into the concept of producing an elaborate storybook without words, dedicated to Maureen, inspired by the fading memories of the books she had read to Kirsty as a child. For the artist, it became a way to block out the ghosts in the hospital, an effective therapy and ultimately a way to live in a more beautiful world than her actual reality.
The 'Wonderland' series took five years to complete, with a further two years to finish the book. The characters are all original and are not reproductions from any existing stories. Everything is real, to scale and can take months to make by hand. The scenes are described as meditations on old fairy tale illustrations and childhood memories mixed with the artist's adult concerns and spiritual connection to nature. Mitchell makes all the costumes and props himself, which are then assembled as small film sets and photographed outdoors in the English countryside. Mitchell describes his work as "wanting to create images that people will project their own ideas onto and lose themselves in - each one is a visual fable in its own right".
Described as a versatile artist, British fine art photographer Kirsty Mitchell uses her previous career in fashion to create costumes to produce images of enchanting dream worlds, all shot in the ancient forests of her native Surrey.
Kirsty describes her method as "Fantasy for Real" and spends months on her carefully handcrafted characters, costumes and props.
Since winter 2018, the 'Wonderland' series has become a major international touring exhibition and was the most visited exhibition at Fotografiska in Stockholm.
