Jim Mortram

Last updated

Jim A. Mortram (born 10 September 1971) [1] is a British social documentary photographer and writer, based in Dereham, Norfolk. [2] [3] His ongoing project using photography and writing, Small Town Inertia, records the lives of a number of disadvantaged and marginalised people living near to his home, [4] in order to tell stories he believes are under-reported. [5] This work is published on his website, [5] in a few zines published in 2013, [6] and in the book Small Town Inertia (2017).

Contents

Small Town Inertia

Mortram began the Small Town Inertia website in 2006 with the "Market Town" stories. Its name is a reference to the market town of Dereham, where he lives, fifteen miles west of the city of Norwich in Norfolk. Through photography, his writing and the subject's own words, Mortram records the lives of the disadvantaged and marginalised, [3] [4] making repeated visits with a number of people living within three miles of his home. [5] Small Town Inertia tells stories of "isolation, poverty, drug abuse, homelesness, self-harm, mental illness, juvenile crime, and epilepsy", [5] [7] that Mortram believes are otherwise under-reported. [5]

Dave Stelfox wrote in The Guardian that "Mortram's rich, black-and-white images possess a timeless quality that invites easy comparison with the classic documentary work of such British photographers as Chris Steele Perkins, Paul Trevor and Chris Killip." [2]

Publications

Publications by Mortram

Zines by Mortram

Publications with contributions by Mortram

Solo exhibitions

Awards

Notes

  1. Electric Tears and All Their Portent in the Café Royal Books archive.
  2. Living with Epilepsy in the Café Royal Books archive.
  3. Small Town Inertia: Diary Entries in the Café Royal Books archive.
  4. Small Town Inertia: Diary Entries 2 in the Café Royal Books archive.

Related Research Articles

Martin Parr British photographer

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.

Christopher David Killip was a Manx photographer who worked at Harvard University from 1991 to 2017, as a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies. Killip is known for his black and white images of people and places especially of Tyneside during the 1980s.

David Hurn British photographer and member of Magnum Photos (born 1934)

David Hurn is a British documentary photographer and member of Magnum Photos.

Shirley Baker was a British photographer, best known for her street photography and street portraits in working class areas of Greater Manchester. She worked as a freelance writer and photographer on various magazines, books and newspapers, and as a lecturer on photography. Most of her photography was made for her personal interest but she undertook occasional commissions.

Simon Roberts is a British photographer. His work deals with peoples' "relationship to landscape and notions of identity and belonging."

Homer Warwick Sykes is a Canadian-born British documentary photographer whose career has included personal projects and landscape photography.

Daniel Meadows British photographer, video-maker and teacher

Daniel Meadows is an English photographer turned maker of digital stories, and a teacher of photography turned teacher of participatory media.

Peter Dench is a British photojournalist working primarily in advertising, editorial and portraiture. His work has been published in a number of books.

Ken Grant British photographer

Ken Grant is a photographer who since the 1980s has concentrated on working class life in the Liverpool area. He is a lecturer in the MFA photography course at the University of Ulster.

Café Royal Books is a small independent publisher of photography photobooks or zines, and sometimes drawing, solely run by Craig Atkinson and based in Southport, England. Café Royal Books produces small-run publications predominantly documenting social, historical and architectural change, often in Britain, using both new work and photographs from archives. It has been operating since 2005 and by mid 2014 had published about 200 books and zines.

John Darwell is a British photographer.

Patricia Anne "Tish" Murtha was a British social documentary photographer best known for documenting marginalised communities, social realism and working class life in Newcastle upon Tyne and the North East of England.

Niall McDiarmid is a Scottish photographer. His work is primarily about documenting the people and landscape of Great Britain. McDiarmid has had solo exhibitions in the UK at Oriel Colwyn in Colwyn Bay, at Museum of London in London and at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. His work is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Paddy Summerfield British photographer

Paddy Summerfield is a British photographer who has lived and worked in Oxford in the UK all his life.

Janine Wiedel is a documentary photographer and visual anthropologist. She was born in New York city, has been based in the UK since 1970 and lives in London. Since the late 1960s she has been working on projects which have become books and exhibitions. In the early 1970s she spent five years working on a project about Irish Travellers. In the late 1970s she spent two years documenting the industrial heartland of Britain. Wiedel's work is socially minded, exploring themes such as resistance, protest, multiculturalism and counter culture movements.

Syd Shelton is a British photographer, living in Hove, who documented the Rock Against Racism movement. His work is held in the collections of Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Brian David Stevens is a British photographer, based in London. He has made work on sound systems of Notting Hill Carnival, war veterans, the Grenfell Tower fire, the British coastline and the suicide spot of Beachy Head. Stevens' work is held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London and National Galleries of Scotland.

Tony O'Shea is an Irish photographer who has made work about Irish life. He lives in Dublin.

John Benton-Harris is an American photographer and educator.

Marc Vallée is a British documentary photographer who has photographed youth culture, in Paris, Berlin, and London where he lives. He has made work about the tension between public and private space in the context of graffiti, skateboarding and queer cultures. Vallée has self-published in zines and shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of London and Somerset House.

References

  1. "About"[ better source needed ]. Facebook. Accessed 23 April 2017
  2. 1 2 Stelfox, Dave (19 February 2014). "'I photograph people who don't have a voice': Jim Mortram's Norfolk portraits". The Guardian . Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  3. 1 2 Coomes, Phil (27 September 2012). "Jim Mortram's Small Town Inertia". BBC News . Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  4. 1 2 "Metering masterclass: achieving perfect exposures in different lighting conditions". Amateur Photographer. 23 July 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 McGuinness, Ross (25 July 2012). "Photographer Jim Mortram gives new voice to marginalised in Market Town". Metro . Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  6. Abraham, Amelia (25 November 2014). "Café Royal Publish Exactly One Great Photobook Every Week". Vice . Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  7. 1 2 "Ones to Watch: Jim Mortram". British Journal of Photography . 160 (7808): 50–51. 2013.
  8. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 30 December 2015. Retrieved 23 April 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. "Small Town Inertia". Small Town Inertia. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  10. Gareth (8 January 2013). "Small Town Inertia". Open College of the Arts . Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  11. "Small Town Inertia". Photoville. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  12. "Exhibition – Small Town Inertia". Edge Hill University . Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  13. "Jim Mortram 28 August 3 September 2014". Camden Image Gallery.[ dead link ]
  14. "J A Mortram: Small Town Inertia". Amber Film & Photography Collective. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
  15. "Q&A: JA Mortram on his ten-year project Small Town Inertia". British Journal of Photography. 7 January 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2019.