Nov 9, 20184 min read

Kirsty Mitchell - Research

I have seen Kirsty Mitchell's work before but had completely forgotten about it until I got told to look as her work for inspiration in a tutorial today. Her work is exactly how I would like my images to look now but right now it's a dream that only I can make happen and I'm determined to. Her project Wonderland is so relatable to what I'm trying to achieve in my work. I was really intrigued to know the story behind the work.

The story behind the work:

'Wonderland' started in the summer of 2009 as a short summer project but little did Mitchell know whilst making the first costume for the shoot that it would actually be a project for the next 5 years. The project came about from the grief she was suffering from her mum passing away 7 months before in November 2008. The project started as a distraction from the pain of reality led to a dramatic turning point in her career and her life. Her mother was an English teacher and always had her head in a book and spent more than thirty years inspiring children with her stories and plays. In 2008 her mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour which left her too ill to come home from the French village she lived in with her husband, this meant that she couldn't have a funeral liked they had planned and left Kirsty feeling like she needed to do something that would never let her be forgotten.

The months after her mothers death she found life really difficult and found herself in another existence and world behind her camera. The other word that she was in turned into a concept of creating an unexplained storybook without words dedicated to her mother. The story she was creating in her head was reminding her of the little parts of the fairytales her mum read to her when she was younger.

When the project started she was working full time as a fashion designer so only had evenings and weekends to create the costumes and props. At the beginning of the project the shoots could take up to a month to prepare for because she was creating everything by hand but as summertime passed it was harder to achieve what she had planned so she decided to carry on. Her aim was to show time passing through the four seasons. Her characters which featured in the images weren't a recreation of any characters in particular but one's that had faded in her memories in the stories her mother had read to her when she was growing up. They were mainly based on the illustrations of the original mixed with the dreams and the underlying adult grief she was facing. She wanted to 'create pictures that people would project their own ideas on to, and lose themselves in, each being a visual fable within their own right'. What actually helped deal with her mother's loss slowly was the physical creation because it gave her the chance to step into the scenes for real.

I found this bit the most interesting... 'At first people presumed everything was created in the computer, the scale of the props, the colours, even the entire landscapes the models were in! So I began to write thorough diary accounts about each picture, and shot behind the scenes footage so the viewer could understand the amount of work involved'. This made me think that I need to do this when I am shooting otherwise people may think the same about my work however I am now looking at using the green screen so a lot of editing will go into the images but everything will be shot by me. I will video my shoot as evidence using inspiration from Mitchell. She had no stylists, designers or professional support just her and friends helping each other out supported by what she could afford to take out of her wages each month.

Two years into the project she found herself basically creating an independent film through a set of independent still images. This became impossible juggle with her career in the fashion industry so she decided to leave her 11 year fashion career behind which she says 'was the hardest decision of my adult life, but thankfully one pf the best'. I think it's really nice and a dedication to her mum that she left her career in the fashion industry to focus and finish the project, the book and the exhibition on Wonderland in memory of her mother.

Mitchell's work is the only work that I have researched into that I have really connected with because she is the only person that has shared her emotional story with. I respect that she has shared her very personal life with us and even the death of her mother but if she didn't do this then the audience wouldn't be able to connect with the images. I can't fault any of her images all I wish to do now is make images half as good as hers. The images she has created on such a small budget is unbelievable.