Wonderland: Photographs by Kirsty Mitchell

Featuring a selection of large-scale artworks accompanied by videos documenting the artist’s creative process, this exhibition is the first to introduce Kirsty Mitchell’s fantastical photographs to American museum audiences.

Kirsty Mitchell is an award-winning fine art photographer from Surrey, England. For the past six years, she has worked on a deeply personal photographic series dedicated to her mother, Maureen, who passed away from a brain tumor in 2008. Kirsty began the project as an escape from reality and a way of coming to terms with her grief. Trained as a fashion designer, she created elaborate costumes and props and collaborated with hair and make-up artist Elbie Van Eeden to compose and then photograph astonishingly beautiful, fantastical scenes in the lush local landscape.

Within months of the series’ inception, Wonderland quickly gained a world-wide following as viewers became connected to the artworks and the intense emotions that inspired them.

What started as a small summer project in Kirsty’s kitchen, suddenly grew into a life-changing journey filled with extraordinary theatrical characters and bursting with all the colors of the passing English seasons. The series culminated in the 2015 publication of The Wonderland Book and, due to overwhelming demand, a second-edition printing in Fall 2016.