SMALL TOWN INERTIA

AUTHOR: JA Mortram

I don’t often read photography books, nor do I really listen to pod-casts. I have Noel Garner to thank for both. He gave me the book and then encouraged me to listen to the podcast. The one helps un-lock the other. But, equally, both are worth reading/listening to in their own right.

The author/ photographer left university to care for his ailing mother. He describes how time, as a carer, passes with day merging into week into month into year and with it the slow evaporation of youthful hopes and aspirations.

In time he connects with his neighbour- a lonely widower barely able to survive after his wife died. Then another connection is made and then another.

Slowly he has built up genuine friendships with many of those society has, at best, left in her wake but more often, treated brutally. Each page manages both to tell something of the isolation & depression whilst also giving the subject dignity and voice. The elderly widower, the lady who has self-harmed, the man struggling to re-build life after prison, the lady over-coming abuse, the man coming to terms with years lost to addiction, the single mother of 2 are presented for you to consider, understand and empathise with.

2 other things:

a) I’ve lost count of the times church members have said to me: ‘We love your project but we’re not sure there are any homeless or vulnerable in our town.’ Oh yes there are. This work makes my point well: all these stories / voices/ photos were taken in Dereham – not ever considered the epicentre of deprivation. In fact it is a posh market town in rich, rural Norfolk!!!

b) He embodies Hope into Action values as well as anyone: mutuality, listening and love. He mentions the latter two while embodying the first. The is no machismo in his approach or photography. He comes alongside the subjects, his friends, with a heart understanding their common humanity, then from compassion validates and helps them. Anyone involved in mentoring (or working for HIA) could do worse than embody the humble approach of JA Mortram!

I recommend the book and podcast to anyone. Click here for the podcast. (It is only 20 mins and so you can get through it, as I did, while chopping the veg!)

(Oh – and I’m delighted to say we are opening a home in Dereham soon. Well done to the churches there! I’ll pray you can come somewhere close to the example of this man!)

A few quotes which struck me:

‘I am on the fringe of society and remember everything, everything said and done whilst sectioned in hospital and its just, just terrifying.’

‘What is the concept of weird? You can analyse all eccentric behaviour and I do. The whole concept of the Sun newspaper, slating people on welfare and the work shy, but all I have ever wanted is a life for myself and girlfriend but that never happened.’

‘It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a disability, you should treat people with respect no matter who they are. People who laugh or think it’s funny to pull the piss out of disabled people, I think they should just wake up and look at themselves in the mirror and think: ‘Thank God it’s not me,’ because one day it could be.’

‘Those people in government, they should put themselves in our shoes, having to use charity shops, make do with holes in things, never go on holidays. I mean it’d be lovely wouldn’t it, to have some things we can’t afford and some security.’

‘How can I be a scrounger when I had no idea benefits existed? I had no idea about DLA, no one told me anything about that and all I wanted to do was leave Tesco, as working nights was doing my head in. I knew it was making me worse but I was so worried I’d be on job seekers allowance, I mean, I couldn’t take care of myself at all, I’d holes in my shoes, sores on my feet.’