https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1 daily 0.75 2025-06-20 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/2025/6/20/taken-a-sabbatical-from-photography monthly 0.5 2025-06-20 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/9e6d48c6-d1b2-4b21-b112-2f7994b80db4/Ryanair+.jpg Blog - Taken a sabbatical from photography - Make it stand out It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the… Charles Dickens https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/6616a579-be29-4865-aa89-ed5d4402079e/portugal+per+petterson.jpg Blog - Taken a sabbatical from photography - Make it stand out …the difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy. Jean Rhys reused by Per Petterson https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/2023/11/23/a-leica-q2-enters-my-life monthly 0.5 2025-06-20 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/341db722-6f09-413c-87af-f11465524138/1Upper+Valley+Catchment+Area++%231+L1000277+A.jpg Blog - A Leica Q2 enters my life - Make it stand out Upper Calder Catchment Area No 1. Golden Water from Source to River Calder water bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/7d026aea-15fa-4b90-b40a-964d86f11987/31+UVC+L1001525_sm.jpg Blog - A Leica Q2 enters my life - Make it stand out Upper Calder Catchment Area No 31. River Calder from Walsden Water to Colden Water water bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/14028ec7-b496-49e8-963b-91fbc3fe6279/20+UCV+L1000907+_s.jpg Blog - A Leica Q2 enters my life - Make it stand out Upper Calder Catchment Area No 20. River Calder from Walsden Water to Colden Water water bodies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/bfa7f502-70be-47e9-9738-10b05e308802/15+UCV+L1000594+Arles.jpg Blog - A Leica Q2 enters my life - Make it stand out Upper Calder Catchment Area No 15. Hebden Water from Widdop Beck to River Calder water bodies https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/2021/1/11/new-lerouge-pinhole-camera monthly 0.5 2021-01-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1610376937760-6DZXDF7CYK9Z7KP0DY10/Lerouge+003+5.jpg Blog - New Lerouge pinhole camera https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1610377099824-4651DOTDK0QS9CTMAQ7U/Lerouge+002+3.jpg Blog - New Lerouge pinhole camera https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1610457471049-7SMODEW803UWKYVMG9NQ/KateLeRouge.jpg Blog - New Lerouge pinhole camera Photo by Charlie Meecham https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/2020/10/8/regenerationnbspnbsp-the-sheffield-project-1981-1991 monthly 0.5 2021-01-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1602158550638-MM4Y007693UYYBQP74ZZ/%231Steel.jpg Blog - Regeneration  - The Sheffield Project 1981-1991 Steel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1602514136714-WOXS7OCEM7OMK5686BFV/%2312Cutquicker.jpg Blog - Regeneration  - The Sheffield Project 1981-1991 Cutquicker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1602158127672-THNROFLEHQLMAWJNGZJ2/%232Nostalgia.jpg Blog - Regeneration  - The Sheffield Project 1981-1991 Nostalgia https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/2019/5/24/kolga-tbilisi-photo monthly 0.5 2021-01-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1558709898928-IL51LP7B2OGUQ3DCLSAY/Kolga+portfolio.jpg Blog - KOLGA Tbilisi Photo https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/2019/3/1/pinhole-photography monthly 0.5 2019-03-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551545843650-RISV8N8NM3IVK6BFZT86/sky+fort.jpg Blog - Using a pinhole camera https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/category/Photography monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/category/Photo+festivals monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/category/Photography+book monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/category/Pinhole+photographs monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/category/Photography+exhibition monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Matthew+Conduit monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Climate monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Nils+Ackermann monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Karl+Mancini monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Kolga+Tbilisi+Photo monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/In+the+Steps+of+Robert+Pinnacle monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Jewgeni+Roppel monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Tim+Smith monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Iain+Stewart monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/John+Darwell monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Sheffield+Museums monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Mike+Black monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Marc+R%C3%A4der monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Arles monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Pinhole+photography monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Julia+Borissova monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/A+Space+for+Photography monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Island%3A+The+Sea+Front monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Upper+Calder+Catchment+Area monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Kate+Mellor monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Berris+Connolly monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Photography monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/John+Davies monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Mustafa+Hasona monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Sanne+de+Wilde monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Topographies+of+the+Image monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Nakagawa monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Osamu+James monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/blog-1/tag/Anna+Fox monthly 0.5 https://www.katemellor.com/events daily 0.75 2021-09-28 https://www.katemellor.com/events/2021/9/18/dive-in-celebrating-450-years-of-harrogates-mineral-springs monthly 0.5 2021-09-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1632841146784-ZXROI9F4NCXDZU4MUGC4/schloss.jpg Events - Dive In - Celebrating 450 years of Harrogate's mineral springs - Make it stand out © Kate Mellor. “After Robert Pinnacle’s ‘Prospect of the Schloss in Baden-Baden.’ “ https://www.katemellor.com/events/2020/4/28/covid-19-fundraiser-in-aid-of-crisis-and-refuge monthly 0.5 2020-04-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1588086785656-2VS8NNW2A9Y5F1XWHXMB/BilbaoGuggenheimTrace.jpg Events - COVID-19 Fundraiser in aid of Crisis and Refuge https://www.katemellor.com/events/2020/2/15/modelling-the-animal monthly 0.5 2020-02-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1582299800309-9MOQAG8WH7NSX5GZBDZE/GuilInst3.jpg Events - Modelling the Animal From Guilbert and Kate: A Collaboration in “Modelling the Animal” at Dean Clough, Halifax https://www.katemellor.com/events/2019/12/17/9a-projects-christmas-contemporary monthly 0.5 2019-12-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1576588683370-DPCBSJYSQOF21M4EZL40/DE+Landscape+003+1invblue_sm.jpg Events - 9A Projects Christmas Contemporary Lucida #1 https://www.katemellor.com/events/2019/11/21/miniclick-talk-with-kate-mellor-and-charlie-meecham monthly 0.5 2019-11-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1573575145012-L1DWO4OOU6QHELI4H3P6/wood5s.jpeg Events - Miniclick Talk with Kate Mellor and Charlie Meecham Photograph by Charlie Meecham https://www.katemellor.com/events/2019/6/21/exchanges monthly 0.5 2019-06-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1559741654876-YRXC8ROY8JIGUUS37FWQ/Simon+FordDH02_white.jpg Events - Exchanges Photograph by Simon Ford https://www.katemellor.com/events/2019/5/5/kolga-tbilisi-photo monthly 0.5 2019-04-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1554729532608-DRYF72IDNAJOCQEZZOQY/3Brighton.jpg Events - KOLGA Tbilisi Photo https://www.katemellor.com/events/2019/4/20/the-brexit-show monthly 0.5 2019-03-20 https://www.katemellor.com/projects daily 1.0 2023-09-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551609657770-7WMYSVGO6J1HMKIJUF70/IMG_4120_72.jpg Projects - GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE Goodbye to Language consists of five handmade books that use language as a metaphor for the everyday. The books refer to a language that Kate has studied – German, Italian, Spanish, French and Swedish, and the words in the books are translated into these languages. The books include photographs of ordinary events and observations taken in each country. The books talk about memory loss and dementia, about losing daily experiences, images and words. The books are titled Ohne Titel, La Bella Figura, I Remember Spain, Goodbye to Language and I Hope You Don’t. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551184827218-2W7MLZKH38KTB2VTRMJR/G2crop2.jpg Projects - GUILBERT AND KATE: A COLLABORATION Kate and Guilbert’s research - “While I was writing a thesis for what seemed like months Guilbert, my cat, would enter the room and greet me and, such was my concentration, he would be completely ignored. Yet he persisted all the time it took me to finish. This tenacity made me wonder at and wonder about the human relationship with other species. I deliberated about the extent that domesticated cats could relate to humans and even empathize. Then I read that cats retained more than any other domesticated animal the basic nature of their wild ancestors. So why did they consent to playing with humans? These initial concerns led to the following photographic project.” Read Kate’s paper here. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551608483724-2AQ050OFFSQIGLL4QENQ/Nia_lg2.jpg Projects - TROUSER TOWN In 2017 the theme for the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival focussed on the idea of the industrial manufacturing history of the town. It was known as the Trouser Town because of its reputation for making trousers usually in cord or moleskin. Kate often shows work in the festival with photographers such as Claire McNamee, Simon Ford or Charlie Meecham. In 2017 she had the idea that because you could see the construction of clothing much better on the inside she would ask people to model their trousers inside-out. It was a silly idea, much too silly to even mention. However the notion got around and soon lots of people volunteered to model for Kate. Here are just a few images. The photographs were exhibited at the launch of Foldworks: www.foldworks.org https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551612675999-KN45XFGP7RW66SWVEKKE/SantiagoCentroCultura.jpg Projects - TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE IMAGE Cidade de Cultura, Galicea designed by Peter Eisenman These pinhole photographs discuss the appearance of signature buildings, erected during an era when world-renowned architects were procured to design image-conscious architecture. The photographs play with the idea of the architecture as heroic and monumental, exploring tensions between the building and its surroundings. They also reflect on an element of the photographic reappearing in the aspect of architecture. The intention behind the post-industrial direction in planning was to change the image of some cities and locations from a heavy manufacturing identity to tourism and leisure. A mythology grew which believed that architecture by itself could actually change the fortunes of cities. This idea sprang largely from Frank O. Gehry’s 1998 design of The Guggenheim in Bilbao whereas the building was part of a thirty year planning initiative to redevelop the unused dockland. ‘Starchitecture’ was not without its critics. Most objected, for social reasons, that an area became gentrified and inaccessible to local people and interests. Many architects and writers pointed out that the building became separated from its surroundings; if there were several buildings the conflicting designs resulted in a place that was incoherent and, if architecture really is like music, a cacophony of architectural communication. The work is part of a research project into the photographic image of architecture. For this series of work the pinhole aesthetic seemed to emphasize the idea of the image - the ‘real’ is generally marked in photographs by super-sharpness. The photographs’ and buildings’ status as image was further amplified by layering. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551364731307-951D96UPYBGOL3OJWPX6/BUhighrise_hw_2.jpg Projects - HIGH RISE HOMEWORKS While working on a fellowship with the International Photography Research Network Kate visited Poprad in Slovakia. Her research work considered landscape, environment, history and locality looking at different ways of constructing place. This is reflected by photographs taken of the modernist domestic architecture in Poprad and digital drawings derived from contemporary and historic domestic textiles. The images of the exteriors of the buildings contrast with the photographs of the interiors of the apartments. The exteriors represent a creation of place arising out of an ideological, social and economic overview whereas the images of people engaged in some domestic chore in their apartments shows the making of place on a more personal, grass roots level, a more organic way of making place that comes out of people's immediate experience and history. The drawn patterns contain iconic landscape features and become another way of describing place. These patterns had, historically, the function of identification - that originally each person would have their own pattern so that they could readily be identified if anything befell them when they were out in the forests. Kate brought these three strands together to create large artworks that reference domestic textiles and wall hangings that comment upon society, place and locality. The works are intended to associate with marching banners used traditionally to show a community, religious or worker's union allegiance. Read Robert Galeta writing about High Rise Homeworks here https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551436898558-SVDW70COISVM2ZEK3JEL/names+2.jpg Projects - IN THE STEPS OF ROBERT PINNACLE Names At the time Kate made this work one of the main discourses that exercised photographers was that photography could not represent truth and was, in fact, a fiction, yet we tended to look through the photograph at the subject itself and accepted the photograph as authority rather than a construction with values, intentions and viewpoint. This is partly why the work takes the form of a conceit. History also being a construction led to the themes of photography and history as fiction being uppermost in Kate’s thinking at the time. Kate chose to base the project upon the career of the landscape painter “Robert Pinnacle.” As painters like Robert Pinnacle belong to the pre-history of photography, as a “follower” Kate imitated his imagined compositions using a pinhole camera. Kate adopted the pinhole method not only because of its aesthetic but because what the use of it instantly said about history and technology. It also seemed relevant to her when people walked through the scene as an exposure was made and not register or at most as a ghostly blur, just like all the people in history who have not registered in the sense that they are unknown. It was made during a time before the celebrity culture became a generality but it was just beginning in the late 1990s so this work can be seen as commenting about that influence in society. A mixture of aesthetics and technologies were used and the photographs were hung “salon” style, the intention being to make photography less transparent, more of a fiction. Not many photographers were making work that used digital technology then and there was fear of the new technology, that it would threaten photography’s position as witness. The digital work ‘Names’ is therefore intended to “prove” Robert Pinnacle’s existence although he is a completely bogus artist. A note at the end of the exhibition allows the audience to appreciate that the work is a conceit. The individual pieces sometimes make reference to the narratives Kate found while researching in the museums and archives in spa towns. Here, she unearthed fascinating stories and linked them to the ideas about truth in photography. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551610363651-OUQ5JFCL16KPPOCPYIVW/steve002.jpg Projects - CLOSE TO HOME Steve Kate continues to add to the personal project Close to Home. She says, " I wanted to photograph things that were nearer to me, to look at where I live and the people around me. I was tired of distance. I wanted to look at roots - the locality where I put down roots and also to consider the roots of photography - the early photographers and the photographic process." She made portraits of her friends and their chosen locations in the surrounding landscape using a plate camera and Polaroid negative film, processing on site to view results and to make direct reference to the process that the 19c pioneers used. By asking the friends to wear more formal clothes she not only reflects the conventions of early studio photography with their figurative backdrops but she asks questions about our position in relation to this kind of landscape, what it has come to represent to us. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551444139162-1IKY2F890530XKYWVM6C/1cover.jpg Projects - UNE SEMAINE DE BONHEUR Le Monde Kate Mellor talks about Une Semaine de Bonheur (A Week of Happiness): "Like the work Close to Home this is a personal project and represents an attempt to document what is near to me. I took the photographs while on holiday with friends and family in Provence and Normandy. It's the story of quite ordinary people in search of happiness. I deliberately chose to use the photographic vernacular of the holiday snap because this is a genre of photography that is accessible to most but is generally not given any significance as a photographic document. I inkjet printed these images onto the newspapers that I read at the time in the locality where I was. The, rather ironic, title makes a reference to the Surrealist artist Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté, a work of collage that he made by cutting up images from popular journals while on a three week holiday in Maloja in 1936. Ernst's work propels us into a dreamlike world in which meaning is never quite fixed, where it breaks up, dissolves and reforms due to chance associations. His work has this unsettling quality of portent. I've borrowed from this by putting my images on the newspaper pages in a fairly loose, haphazard way - making use of the chancy collisions between my photographs about the unnewsworthy nature of our holiday snaps and the 'important' historic documentation of the newspapers. It's like a contemporary method of collage. I like the way that the juxtapositions make you re-read both the insignificant photographs of the escapist (therefore seen to be somewhat meaningless and banal) experience of the annual family vacation and the newspaper stories or information. I've photographed subject matter that a person on holiday with their family might engage with. The look of the images can be quite confusing and ambiguous - there is supposed to be a deliberate withholding of resolution and closure. I'm aiming more at transience and instability and chaos. We don't know if the family will be happy because at any chancy and haphazard moment their position could shift from non-event to event, from the triviality of the holiday snap to the historic document of the news story. I made this work in 2001 and it is quite interesting to look back and see that the work also functions as a comment about the global and local - the G8 anti-globalisation demonstrations were taking place at the time. The newspapers are, of course, fading. That's in the nature of it." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551704867890-Z4QKVLBDD5Y7VA619CH7/ISLAND.jpg Projects - ISLAND: THE SEA FRONT Kate began the project Island: The Sea Front in 1989 when Britain began building the Channel Tunnel. The construction work was accompanied by consideration of Britain's identity, of the legacy of an imperialist past, the residual insularity of the island. This work looks at the connections between geography and history and cultural constructions of the land and explores the way photography and cartography have been used to define territory. Using a Widelux panoramic camera and locating the vantage points on a formula based on the Grid Reference system (a method of orientation which has its roots in military charts) Kate photographed the coastline always looking out towards the horizon, a line which runs centrally through the whole series of 48 images. A book, published by Dewi Lewis in 1995 is available at www.foldworks.org. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551449336099-M921H9OGS9YEU86MDBDC/gateway.jpg Projects - SIGHTLINES Kate Mellor worked with Chris Broughton at Enville Hall in Staffordshire where they were artists-in residence in 2002 as part of the Staffordshire Public Arts project - Hidden Gardens. Chris was a well-known illustrator who contributed regularly to The New Arcadians publication of historic garden design research. Explorations around William Shenstone's historic garden and researches in the Enville Hall archives resulted in work which contemplated interventions in the landscape and compared differing strategies of seeing landscape. Sightlines and panoramas, bird's eye perspectives, viewpoints and vantage points, dazzling light and "umbrageous gloom" contributed to their images of the past, the current and the imagined. Chris’s work can be viewed on the Staffordshire Past Track website https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551454371183-GOZFR3S1NPGV6G57J820/%2318.jpg Projects - WASTELAND This commission by the Untitled Gallery (now Site) in Sheffield centred on an area of lush peat land called Thorne Moors. It was a place that was historically used for coal mining and peat gathering. At the time of this commission the peat was being extracted on an industrial scale although much of the area was protected and supported burgeoning plant and insect life. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1553010167899-8GTWX825GRX9C4C186OA/RiverCalder029_13_150white.jpg Projects - RIVER Kate has only exhibited this work in two places, both far and near, Novosibirsk in Russia and the Salem Bowling Pavilion in the locality where she lives in Yorkshire. The work River follows the river Calder from source to sea. The river that begins its journey high in the Pennines joins the Aire and the Ouse and the water that flows down this channel passes within yards of her studio. The project is about flows and shifts and changes and takes as a starting point Heraclitus’s belief that everything is in flux. It is the same water but it takes on different visual forms. He also likened the river to a lifespan - it is time-based and the photographs are also meant to be viewed in this way. Heraclitus’s best known quote is “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1692967265723-OZ58PAVNSOFG41SVINZV/image-asset.jpeg Projects https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551363972884-I3ZTUEFW4SB48AQM99I7/office+lds+rd+%233.jpg Projects - ARCHITRAUM The Bradford Grid Photography Project is a collaborative group of photographers who live or work in the city and surrounding district. Back in the day the group began meeting in the Three Pigeons in Halifax to show each other their work for feedback, companionship and beer. It was suggested that the group expand and adopt the strategy of The Portland Grid Project in Oregon. That was quite a few years ago and since, the group has grown and collectively exhibited photography, video, text-image and projection work. The images shown here are work from Kate’s contribution to the project. She used a pinhole camera to take photographs and then worked digitally to create images about architecture, vision, imagination and desire... a dream or trauma https://www.katemellor.com/about-1 daily 0.75 2019-05-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551539959385-U46TEZ0ZFAQA8UJ5PULO/Charlie+and+Kate+cropped3.jpg About Kate and Charlie in Hardcastle Crags https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c740219e666695baf2bae68/1551540030419-H1W39F6PDY69L58B6BRC/Kate_TT.jpg About Kate modelling for Trouser Town