I am a tirelessly curious world wanderer and a travel/documentary photographer. My main passion lies in capturing disappearing ancient cultures and the human condition in unique, challenging situations.

My rage of subjects is fairly broad, but whether I am photographing nomadic shepherds in India, life in the last traditional villages of Eastern Europe or sulfur miners working in a volcanic crater, my common aim is always the same - to capture the human element.

I freelance and shoot documentary photo stories on the above mentioned topics. Much of my travel/documentary photography is represented by Getty Images, while my cultural portraits, both colour and black and white are in the private collections of photo lovers and collectors worldwide.

This website should provide a general idea of what I do. For a more extensive collection of my images - check out my ARCHIVES ON PBASE.

Once or twice a year I will be running photography workshops in some of the most photogenic locations around the world. Click the ‘LEARN’ button for more information or keep yourself updated on what I’m up to in general on my ‘BLOG’.

Prints of my work can be purchased through the ‘PRINTS’ section.

email: mitchell@mitchellkphotos.com
mobile: +612403038684
 

 

 

 

 
I heard much about Indonesia's warrior tribes, ancient cultures and traditions. However when I arrived, I was confronted by the fact that in general, the cultures and traditions of Indonesia are not readily visible, they have already been transformed by the rapidly modernising world.

To find what I was looking for I had to journey around what can be described as enclaves of timelessness, sprinkled all over the archipelago, as randomly as the islands of this nation are “sprinkled” over the map.

The enclaves are places, which for whatever reason have been almost entirely forgotten or ignored by the onslaught of modernisation. Here it’s easy to loose the sense of the time we live in. The enclaves do not obey rules of the “developed world”, physical prowess is still relied upon to survive and people’s relationship with the land on which they are born and raised is central to their existence. If not for the occasional give-away, I could have very well believed that I time-traveled back, a century or two.

Photographically I wanted to create a body of work which would speak about the life and culture of these enclaves. I shot the everyday realities – people working in a volcanic crater, hunting manta rays, wearing traditional clothes, which they themselves made. Such things could hardly be more different from what happens in my own everyday world.