Go under or become obsessed with the obsessed. It was the only options Kirsty Mitchell claims to have had when her mother died of a brain tumor ten years ago. She chose the latter option.

It took only six months from the time that the mother developed the disease that she was gone. It was a chockartad experience that I could not deal with or talk about with anyone. My salvation was the camera. And the forest.

slept since she came to Stockholm for four days ago – despite the intake of sleeping pills. The reason is spelled ”Wonderland”, her exhibition that opens at Fotografiska in Stockholm in a couple of days. A year after that she on his own initiative mailed a folder of pictures to the museum, she can’t yet understand that it is true. She – in one of the world’s largest fotomuseer?

– the First time I was here I was standing outside and was screaming as another Eliza Doolittle. The building was so huge! Before I got the reply about how great the space the exhibition would be given, I thought, ”I may well have a work on a toilet or something,” says Kirsty Mitchell, who was working in the business before she started taking pictures ten years ago.

From ”The stars of spring will carry you home” from ”Wonderland”. Photo: Kirsty Mitchell

We walk among the exhibition’s 74 photographs all plåtats in the rural surroundings of the home Surrey just outside of London. It is fanciful images where Kirsty Mitchell built up a scenery that evokes associations to both ”Alice in wonderland” as the ”Game of Thrones” and Andrew Adamsons film adaptation of ”the Witch and the Lion”. With the exception of the spouse and a couple of assistants, she stands for everything in the process itself; the scenography, costume mutva.com and photo.

if his muse, enter Alexander McQueen the british fashion designer who she worked with for a year before his death in 2010 – is obvious: the dramatic draperingarna, ruffles, the tips and the victorian references are recurrent in the costumes which, like the other props seem to fastvuxna in nature. But despite Mitchell’s past, it is not fashion photography, she deals with – her garments are often of perishable materials and more than people are her models a type of being – the archetypes found in fairy tale land.

– the Exhibition is called ”Wonderland”, but rather than any specific fairy tale arise the pictures out of fragmentary memories from my childhood and the books my mother read to me. For me, depicts the photos, above all, a journey in grief.

When the mother developed the disease she had and Kirstys father just moved to the south of France – ironically, a right spontaneous idea to experience an ”adventure”. The mother’s cancer hit so brutally that she was too weak to move home to England. It was in France, she was being treated and went away.

the Funeral was terrible. Of course it was sad, but as much because it was so unremarkable and tragically small. My mother, who was engelskalärare and touched the lives of generations of students under the age of thirty, ought to have had the opposite: a grand burial, filled to the last bench. I was completely destroyed when I went away, and could not accept that it was our last farewell would look like. There and then I gave myself a promise. I would make a tribute that showed what an amazing person my mother was.

Kirsty a camera. She began taking self-portraits, as a sort of documentation of himself in the grieving process. Raised in Kent, called ”The garden of England”, spent she and her mother a lot of time in the woods – all year, in the sunshine, snörstorm, driving rain and hail. So the forest became a natural refuge in grief: a calm and secure place where She found comfort in the darkness. And she took the camera and began to build up scenery on the basis of the memories that came over her.

With time, it became iscensättningarna more and more advanced, with props and models that Kirsty adorned with flower arrangements and the costumes she created. Some fotograferingstillfällen could last for sixteen hours at a stretch. Often, the places She visited in the months to capture the feeling she wanted to convey in the image. At times she was almost drained of power, but now she had found a purpose with his grief and his manic work. She would make a book that reflected the love between her and her mother.

Photo: Kirsty Mitchell

” I can’t say I’m religious, but I believe in the energy that exists in nature. How it is constantly changing, dying, and resurrected is a miracle.

lay out their creations on Flickr, a web community for photographers. The imaginative the photos and the story that came with each image quickly became a success, and when the Daily Mail picked up the story of the sorgkantade photo shoot entitled ” it transformed soon into a world first. Book publishing began to hear of itself, but according to Mitchell meant such collaborations are always compromises in which she was forced to make compromising on his vision. At the same time, was the ambitious project is expensive: fotograferingarna demanded a huge amount of time and the book’s form and the pressure would be of the highest quality. Crowdfunding became a way to finance the project, which she worked with for five years.

” I and my husband sat on edge when we put out the project on Kickstarter. Was anyone interested at all? But so it began to tick. At twenty-eight days we had received 340.000 pounds. It was the highest sum that a photo book dragged on a crowdfunding.

the exhibit space, we stop at the photo of a woman walking across a meadow in the barren winter landscape. With the exception of the giant wreath of dazzling flowers she wears around its neck are all snow-white – nature as well as her clothes, hair and skin. But if one takes a step closer so visible even a splash of color on the model’s hand: a small bird with a dark orange breast.

” It was the last picture we took in the series. We had been out in the cold for several hours when a bird begins to circulate over the us. It flew several times around the team before it landed where on the hand. And it remained so that we could take the picture! Afterwards told one of the assistants that it was a robin. And that rödhaken is a symbol of a spiritual messenger, ” says a tearful Kirsty Mitchell.

– most people can relate to the feeling of sadness and loss, it affects us all. My pictures, but above all, my story might give comfort in that big that can eat us up, but as yet is so difficult to put into words. And give a sense of hope that, despite everything, can come something beautiful out of it where the bottomless darkness.