From ghost trains to backstreet weddings, from demolition sites to ‘alien’s eye views’ of Leeds, groundbreaking photographer Peter Mitchell captures our changing world with his trusty ‘Blad’ – and once even tried to leave it

The Quarry Hill flats in Leeds were once the largest social housing complex in the UK. A utopian vision of homes for 3,000 people. Built in the 1930s, they were modelled on the Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna and La Cité de la Muette in Paris. However, after just 40 years, the buildings were crumbling and largely deserted. Over the course of five years in the 1970s, Peter Mitchell documented their demolition, from smashed windows and wrecked apartments to abandoned wardrobes and solitary shoes. Finally, when all that was left standing was a lone arch, he tried to photograph the wrecking crew standing in front of it, but couldn’t get the arch in.

“So,” Mitchell remembers, “the foreman said, ‘We do have a crane.’ I can’t stand heights but they lowered the crane down so I could stand on it, then lifted me up to quickly get the shot. I was swaying about a bit and all but one of them came out blurred – but I got the picture.”