A photo of a place you know can tweak a feeling towards, even if the picture is recent, something like nostalgia. Part of the urge for capturing everything through a phone camera is the desire to look back, straight away, at a view we don’t feel like we can get in the place at the time. Some of photographer Hannah Platt’s pictures of Leeds are of places that are minutes away from me, and I’m glad for them because now I can always see things her way. It makes living here a lot more fun.

Hannah’s recent work revisits that of legendary photographer Peter Mitchell, five decades from his first pictures of Leeds, by chronicling a city that in their pictures is always doing something, even if it’s something very still or very silly. Neither Peter or Hannah are from Leeds originally, but like with Don Revie coming from Middlesbrough to Leeds United or Marcelo Bielsa from Rosario, their work reflects the place back to us who are too used to it to see it clearly.

“I have a really special and quite cheeky connection with Leeds,” Hannah said in an email, “a relationship I’ve been nurturing for over a decade now. I like to think that the fun, charming happenings I find were put there just for me to discover and that Leeds is in on it — it’s almost like a secret that we share… yet I’m really bad at keeping secrets.

“Leeds has given me so much, a home, a network, and a playground of character to explore, so it means the world to be able to shout about it from the rooftops in my most recent publication Nosey Parker, which captures the joy and humour that sits at the core of the city and beyond.

“My ‘Armley Pigeons’ photo is currently hanging proudly at Leeds Art Gallery as part of the Leeds Artists Show, which is an absolute honour and feels like a way of blowing a kiss back to Leeds.”

(You can see more of Hannah’s work at HannahPlatt.com, or alongside ninety other local artists in Leeds Artists Show 2023 at Leeds Art Gallery until 30th April 2023)

(This article is free to read from TSB magazine 2022/23 issue 06. To buy paper copies or read more, click here) ⬢