Small Town Inertia

May 18, 2023

Jim Mortram’s Small Town Inertia is an ongoing project which shines a light on the real life consequences the so-called “A-word” is continuing to have on communities, over a decade since its introduction. It wreaks havoc on the most vulnerable in our society and it targets those who can least afford basic necessities.

Recent Stories

Interior Design in the Age of Extinction
Conrado Velasco is a photographer and art director born and educated in the Philippines. He currently divides his time between Ireland and Germany and here we present you his body of work Interior Design in the Age of Extinction. By Velasco’s own admission, he tends to look at the environment in zoos as a theatre for the uncanny, exuding the sense of something being ever so slightly off. They are “illusory spaces” devoid of the natural habitat and surroundings of its animal occupants — there ar
Conrado Velasco
The place inside the head of False Creek
Amy Romer uses photography to gain understanding of the place that she decided to make her home by choice rather than birth. 5 years ago she moved to Canada and for her project The Place Inside the Head of False Creek she gives us the story of Sen̓áḵw.
Amy Romer
Exemplary Home
Exemplary Home is a documentary work exploring the north-western part of rural Bulgaria. It aims to illustrate the effects of rapid urbanisation, progressive globalisation and corruption on the most vulnerable parts of Bulgarian society.
Yassen Grigorov
The 2nd day. What it means to be there
Oleksandr Khomenko [https://www.facebook.com/oleksandr.khomenko] is a Kyiv-based photographer who shows life in Ukraine as it is in independent media like hromadske.ua [https://en.hromadske.ua/] and Ukrainer [https://ukrainer.net/en/]. For the second day, people with emergency bags and pets have been staying at the Kyiv subway stations. The entrance is free. Many people have found shelter at the ‘Politekhnichnyi Instytut’ metro station — the hall is full. They are sitting on their suitcases,
Oleksandr Khomenko
A frightening lull in anticipation of the unknown
Imagine being there, in full absence of clarity what's going to happen next minute, hour and day. Is there a future? If so, how does it look? The whole world can not answer this question facing a tyrannous psycho, a hostage of his own crimes on a global scale, entangled in his own lies. All we admire, adore and pray for the Ukrainian people whose will for freedom is the most inspiring thing these days.
Emanuele Mei
Beyond the sea
Great Britain, being an island, is surrounded by water. The outlier of Europe, the Brits have always had a thing for their coastal towns. Bournemouth, Brighton, the Kent coastline, are the ones that come to mind first. The sea is hugely important for many industries — tourism, fishing, transport. Often mocked
Alex Micu
Presence in the Absence
The story takes desolated buildings and structures as its starting point. Devoid of human presence, albeit designed and constructed by humans, these are places that were once the product of a utopian vision.
Karin van de Wiel
Black Eyed Dog
The author opens up about his own struggles with Black Eyed Dog — A Photographic Healing Process. It was born out of a breakdown, a complete shutdown of his nervous system which made him find himself in a dark, gloomy place, one which he has never visited before.
Benedict Stenning
Calais Migrant Camp ‘The Jungle’
Back in September 2016, Aaron Chown set out to document the Jungle Camp in Calais where asylum seekers reside before attempting to enter the United Kingdom. The photographer highlighted the humanitarian migration crisis that engulfed the continent 5 years ago and decided it’s appropriate and important to remind us of the situation on the 5th anniversary of the demolition of the camp.
Aaron Chown
"The situation is fucked up, but people are fucking great!"
Kharkiv, Ukraine on the first day of Russian invasion
Pavel Dorogoy

mnngful Originals

mnngful Members

Sean McDonnell
UK
,
Londoon

I've been practising street photography since the 1980s. A south Londoner by birth pre-occupied with the West End in black and white on film. Lockdown was an epiphany for me. I started documenting my neighbourhood to raise money for food banks with books and working with local community groups.

Francesca Cao
IT
,
Milano

Francesca Cao has been published and exposed in Europe and United States. In her personal work constantly looks for new ways of telling stories to stimulate the aesthetic reflection on photography, and emotionally move the viewer. Her first book Temporary Life is published by Postcart in 2020.

Ashima Yadava
US
,
San Franscisco

Photographer based in San Franscisco, California Born in New Delhi, India, Ashima now lives in San Francisco, California. She works in digital and analog methods including medium, and 4x5 large format. With the camera as her conduit, Ashima believes in art as a means to social activism and reform. Her work is rooted in documentary practice with a keen focus on issues of gender equality, race, and social justice. Like If Hands Could Speak, which deals with domestic violence in the South Asian community in the Bay Area.

Stephen Leslie
UK
,

Film director, screenwriter and photographer based in London "About 20 years ago I started to take photographs with a small point and shoot camera. What began as a simple way to keep visually alert in between directing jobs soon morphed in to a daily diary of images and eventually became an obsession I've been struggling to contain ever since."

Daniel Hinks
CN
,

Documentary photographer constantly fascinated by the human condition. I take on stories that I genuinely believe in, something that can pique my interest and curiosity, turning that energy outwards into creating a substantial body of work and concentrating on the resilience of the human spirit. I have a profound belief that the still image can change people’s minds. Even in today’s forever changing, fast-paced world of now! Gaining access to my subjects is imperative as it helps to achieve clarity and provides me with an opportunity for creative freedom.

Marc Wilson
UK
,
Bath

Documentary photographer working on long-term documentary projects, such as his previous work, completed in 2014, ‘The Last Stand’ and his current work, ‘A wounded landscape’. Marc tells stories through his photography, focusing at times on the landscape itself, and the objects found on and within it, and sometimes combining landscape, documentary, portrait and still life, along with audio recordings of interviews and sounds, to portray the mass sprawling web of the histories and stories he is retelling.

Benedict Stenning
FR
,

Documentary photographer whose work is primarily concerned with investigating peoples experiences with their proximal surroundings. Benedict is interested in the relationships we as human beings form with our environs and each other while seeking to subvert perspectives; identifying and capturing liminal spaces to form narratives and provoke an emotional response. Benedict was brought up with the arts from a young age and has an innate appreciation for the powers of story telling. His grandfather, Moran Caplat CBE, was General Manager at Glyndebourne opera house in the Sussex countryside for over 30 years and his father was a stage manager at the BBC and later an associate producer in film.

Max J
CY
,
Limassol

Documentary and street photographer from Cyprus. Founder of mnngful, The Phooks. Author of TheIslandArchive.com.

Rik Moran
US
,

Sabrina Jeblaoui
DE
,
Berlin

Documentary and street portrait photographer based in Berlin. Started discovering the role electronic and techno music played within the party scene in Berlin since she moved there in 2017 and has decided to take photographs of people in front of clubs. NachtClubsBerlin is Sabrina’s first complete photo project. It gathered more than 28K followers on its Instagram account and caught the attention of several magazines, newspapers, as well as TV channels such as ZDF MorgenMagazin, Tagesspiegel, Ze.tt, Mix Mag, Vice, and more.

Tony Fouhse
CA
,
Ottawa

Photographer based in Ottawa, Canada His work has attracted international attention and been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The British Journal of Photography, American Photography 26, CV Photo, Time magazine, Wired and Vie des Arts. His photographs have been exhibited internationally, most recently at the Noorderlicht International Fotofestival in Groningen, The Netherlands (2019); Cortona On The Move photo festival, Italy and, as part of the Beyond Addiction/Reframing Recovery exhibition, in NYC and Rochester, N.Y. (2020).

Hannah Cauhépé
ES
,
Barcelona

Photographer, videographer, photo editor and writer based in Barcelona and working for assignments worldwide.

Isaac Kirby
UK
,
London

London based-photographer and copywriter originally from the Australian town of Snake Valley.

Nicola Lewis-Dixon
UK
,
Preston

Multidisciplinary artist based in Preston, who comes from a predominately photographic background and has just completed a photography MA at UCLan. Lewis-Dixon’s work is autobiographical and considers the social construct of women’s lived experience and shifting identity in today's society. Lewis-Dixon’s approach is research lead, highly expressive and conceptual in her visual output. Lewis-Dixon’s work explores and tests multiple methodological processes such as documentary, experimental, alternative darkroom processes, embroidery and most recently multi-sensory installations requiring video and soundscape. In her most recent work, Nicola takes us on her own healing journey, reclaiming her body following cervical cancer and hysterectomy. Both projects ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Healing with Nature’ are ongoing as they are used therapeutically to rediscover her own broken alienated body and heal.

Johan Brooks
JP
,
Tokyo

Documentary and street photographer based out of Tokyo, Japan. Born in the UK, he grew up in NYC, and eventually found his way to Japan where he has been living for over 10 years. He is a member of the VoidTokyo photography collective. His photography is on permanent display at the Crunchyroll HQ in San Francisco and was recently exhibited at Terranova House in Tokyo.

Stories worth seeing

mnngful is a platform supporting independent documentary photography & photojournalism.

Thanks to passionate storytellers, we learn about matters that otherwise stay neglected. Stories that matter, but have not been covered enough are captured and told by passion-driven photographers and journalists.

They create because they care about the world they live in and tell us about matters beyond our eyesight.Their work is often driven by pure enthusiasm, fuelled by own beliefs and dreams for a better world. That's why such independent work is worth special attention.

mnngful is here to support the meaningful stories they tell.

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