A Photographic Life-384: 'Special Episode, A Conversation with Photographer Jim Mortram'

In this special episode UNP Founder and Curator Grant Scott speaks with documentary photographer Jim Mortram about long form projects, empathy, collaboration, community and social media. Jim Mortram Jim Mortram is a British social documentary photographer and writer, based in Dereham, Norfolk in the East of England. His ongoing project, Small Town Inertia, records the lives of a number of disadvantaged and marginalised people living near to his home, in order to tell stories he believes are under-reported. His photographs and writing are published on his website, and have been published by Café Royal Books in 2013, and in the book Small Town Inertia published by Bluecoat Press in 2017. Small Town Inertia Two will be publisshed in 2025. 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, making repeated visits with a number of people living within three miles of his home. Small Town Inertia tells stories of “isolation, poverty, drug abuse, homelessness, self-harm, mental illness, juvenile crime, and epilepsy”, that Mortram believes are otherwise under-reported. 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.” An exhibition of the work titled Small Town Inertia will be shown at the Side Gallery, Newcastle, England, Saturday 12 January 2019 – Sunday 24 March 2019. https://smalltowninertia.co.uk Dr.Grant Scott After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work zas a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now. Mentioned in this episode: https://gilesduley.com © Grant Scott 2025