Peter Mitchell: Memento Mori

RRB Photobooks presents a corrected reprint of Memento Mori, Peter Mitchell’s first publication, long out of print. Originally published in 1990, Memento Mori documents the dramatic impact of the Quarry Hill redevelopment project in Leeds.

'I photograph dying buildings and Quarry Hill was terminal by the time I got to it. Times change and I know there was no point in keeping Quarry Hill Flats. But what it stood for might have been worth remembering.'

Quarry Hill Flats was a large housing estate, built on continental lines and peculiar to Leeds. The largest and most modern of their kind in Europe, housing around 3,000 people, the Flats were constructed during the 1930s as part of a ‘great social experiment’ to accommodate an entire urban community. But soon the daring vision for the future began to crumble – literally – and by the 1950s the Flats were infamous. During the 1970s the decision was made to demolish the ‘stone jungle; and Peter Mitchell arrived in Leeds in time to record the passing of the great estate.

This is not merely a record of demolition but a tribute to the power of photography, to those who engineered and built the Flats, to the people who lived and died in the Flats and to the city of Leeds itself. Using archive material – much of it private and unpublished – Memento Mori details the ideas behind the Flats, their construction, and their eventual demise.