Born in 1943, Peter Mitchell joined the Ministry of Transport as a trainee straight from school, but thought better of it and went to study art at Hornsey College of Art in north London instead, specializing in silk-screen printing. Then, in 1973, he traveled to Leeds to visit friends living in a squat in the city’s northern suburb of Headingley, and chose to stay. “I set up a silk-screen studio in the basement of where I was living,” he says.
He has lived in Leeds ever since, and for most of that time has been earning his living as a graphic designer. But to pay the rent in 1973, he got a job as a lorry driver with a company called Sun Electrical. For the compulsive I-Spyer, it was a dream position. “I delivered electrical items such as fridges and heaters to factories and homes all over the city,” he says. “For a couple of years, every day I went all round Leeds.”
 |
| Eric Massheder, dripping-refinery worker, Vulcan Street, spring 1975. |
 |
| Ready Mixed Concrete Ltd, Elland Road, summer 1977. |
 |
| Mr Pearson, steam-grab driver, Victoria Bridge, spring 1974. |
 |
| Mrs Collins and Mrs Clayton, Robinsons’ Famous Fisheries, Beck Road, summer 1974. |
 |
| Mr Reuben, Rugby Cabinet Co Ltd, Lucas Court, summer 1974. |
 |
| Mr Gower, Cabin Cafe, Upper Wortley Road, winter 1975. |
 |
| Tivoli Cinema, Sissons Lane, summer 1976. |
 |
| Raine Bros Ltd, plumbers’ merchants, Crown Street, spring 1974. |
 |
| View to the West, Quarry Hill Flats, summer 1977. ‘The Kitson House telephone was the only one on the estate,’ says Mitchell. |
 |
| Francis Gavan, ghost-train ride, Woodhouse Moor, spring 1986. ‘Francis built this apparition himself and was stuck in Leeds for the next three days with a broken generator.’ |
 |
| Elaine Whitehead & Linda, Red Brick Cafe, Dewsbury Road, summer 1992. ‘Sandwiched between the tarmac and the sky, and with those red bricks, Elaine’s cafe is so Leeds.’ |
 |
| Noel and his lads, demolition men, Quarry Hill Flats, summer 1978. ‘The last arch of Quarry Hill. Noel, with a real sense of occasion, got his men to pose for posterity.’ |
