I moved to Leeds in the early 1970s and since then I have been photographing their dying buildings and the people associated with them, making notes and observations to accompany each topic. This image appeared at the Impressions Gallery in York in 1979, as part of an exhibition I called A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission.
In the show, each photograph was bordered with a grid of coordinates like those used by NASA, and mounted on a tin frame painted bright red. I wanted to give the impression that the Viking Mars probes, which had been launched a few years earlier, had returned to Earth and their rovers were now rolling through the streets of Britain taking pictures. The photos in the show were largely from Leeds, but I also included photographs taken in London and Sheffield, as well as NASA images of the surface of Mars.
I passed this idea on to the director of the gallery, Val Williams, and she had been very encouraging. However, I was very hooked when the exhibition opened. I worked mainly in color, and at the time, documentary photography was mostly limited to black and white. There were also objections to the way he had framed the photographs. But a few years ago, the revived show was taken to Arles, where a bomb fell.
‘What are you doing?’ they shouted. “Take a picture at the movies,” I shouted. ‘Because?’ they replied. ‘Left’
I had seen this scene on a good bright day when I felt the need to walk through Leeds, heading south towards the coal mining areas of Beeston and Hunslet. I was heading for a small church whose former vicar had been the Rev. Charles Jenkinson, an unconditional champion of the Quarry Hill flats, the powerful Art Deco urbanization built in central Leeds. I had spent five years documenting its decay and demolition.
I was expecting stained glass or even a 1930s mural as a tribute to the man, but I found nothing in the church. However, just across the road was a massive cinema, the Tivoli, which functioned as a bingo hall. The facade was quite wasted, but the back was a winner. The two ladies were chatting but, as if to avoid the streetlight, or perhaps to take a break from their shopping, they stopped abruptly and noticed me with my Hasselblad, waiting for them to continue.
“What are you doing?” they shouted. “I’m taking a picture at the movies,” I yelled. “Why? He’s gone.” “Because I love it the way it is.” And they left. Whenever the image appeared in exhibitions, the caption was always: “Two anonymous ladies, Leeds, 1976”.
We move quickly to the beginning of this year. Rudi, my agent, receives an email from a Gloria England. She had seen the image on Instagram. The two women in the photo were her mother Doreen and her friend Sonia who was returning home from work. By this time, the Viking images had been collected in a book, which Rudi published in Gloria. He returned directly with the revelation that he had also photographed the mill where Doreen and Sonia worked and that the couple appeared in the book twice.
Kays Mail Order Warehouse on Marshall Street, October 1979. Photo: Peter Mitchell
For me, photography is a matter of coincidences. The Marshall Linen Mill, also known as Temple Works and later Kays Mail Order Warehouse, was the most beautiful building in Leeds, a colossal Egyptian temple built in 1840 and employing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young women. I photographed him in the late 70s, while everyone was marking the night shift. One woman was signaling to the others so they could queue and she could have been dancing like an Egyptian. To get to the entire façade, I had to go back into the dark depths of the Co-op funeral home garage over the road and pull away a couple of hearse cars.
The last time I looked, it was semi-abandoned, while the Tivoli was completely flattened 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.
CV of Peter Mitchell
Born: Manchester, 1943. Education: London College of Printing and Graphic Arts / Hornsey College of Art. Influences: Bob Mazzer, Val Williams, Rudi Thoemmes, Leeds. Highlight: “My own show at the Arles photography festival in 2016.” Low point: “I lost 540 individual negatives, even though I found them two years later.” Tip: “Travel by bus.”