Kirsty Mitchell’s extraordinary Wonderland series – three years in the making

Danaus: A close-up of a model before a sunlit backdrop, peering through a veil of paper butterflies

Danaus: A close-up of a model before a sunlit backdrop, peering through a veil of paper butterflies

Kirsty Mitchell’s late mother Maureen was an English teacher who spent her life inspiring generations of children with imaginative stories and plays. Following Maureen’s death from a brain tumour in 2008, Kirsty channelled her grief into her passion for photography.

She retreated behind the lens of her camera and created Wonderland, an ethereal fantasy world. The photographic series began as a small summer project but grew into an inspirational creative journey.

Kirsty explains:

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Photography threatens fantasy – or does it?

With her American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon goes on the hunt for America’s dirty secrets.

Gaining entrance to places as diverse as a white tiger breeding facility, the JFK Airport quarantine area and virus-research labs, Simon shows the things that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience.

Meanwhile, in her earlier book The Innocents, she shot portraits of more than 80 wrongly accused death-row inmates who were exonerated by DNA testing, and investigated photography’s role in that process.

At issue here was the question of photography’s function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice.

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