Described as a multi-faceted artist, British fine art photographer Kirsty Mitchell draws on her past careers in fashion design and costume making, to produce images of beguiling dream-like worlds all shot in the ancient woodlands of her home county Surrey. Kirsty describes her approach as ‘Fantasy for Real’ spending months meticulously handcrafting her character’s costumes and props to coincide with the bloom of wild flowers and the seasonal extremes of her local environment.

In the summer of 2009 Kirsty embarked on the creation of the Wonderland series, a project intended as a book in her mother’s memory. The international acclaim for this body of work led Mitchell to leave her fashion career behind in 2011 and after a total of 5 intensive years, Wonderland was completed at the end of 2014.

A year later, after a number of offers from major publishers, Mitchell decided to launch her own crowdfunding campaign to produce the Wonderland book in order to create a high end publication made from the finest materials possible, printed in Italy. The campaign went on to become the most successfully funded photography books in crowdfunding history, raising more than £334,000 in just 28 days and was completely sold out within 3 months. The Second Edition was released in the Autumn of 2016 and continued to sell all over the world, with the latest Third Edition having just been released in December 2021.

Since the winter of 2018 the Wonderland series has become a major international touring museum show, hosted by Fotografiska, one of the world’s largest and most prestigious museums for contemporary photography. The exhibition is the first time all 74 pieces in the Wonderland collection have been displayed together and received record breaking audience numbers at its inaugural venue Fotografiska Stockholm.

WORKS BY KIRSTY