#3. The Big Issues

Having worked outside the UK, predominantly in the global south, for the last 16 years, I am faced with a completely different landscape to navigate. First things first, I need to understand the umbrella issues that I can work on, then find the stories that need to be told.

My work is all about people. It is about building empathy and humanising strangers to the point where their story matters. It is about taking complicated issues and making them accessible through short, compelling personal accounts.

Advocacy through photographic portraits can be really effective but it takes a certain type of story to really benefit from this treatment.

I have worked as a photographer in South Africa for the last 16 years. It is where I honed my craft and where I found my passion. There are endless issues to work on, and most of them are unmissable. You don't have to look far in South Africa to find a story of injustice that needs to be told.

The wealth disparity is obvious, and the exploitation of workers is an open secret that many people are complicit in sustaining. The water, air and land pollution is impossible to ignore. And the injustices in housing, health and education are constantly overwhelming.

There are thousands of people who need their story to be told; people who need a mouthpiece so that they can feel heard and taken seriously.

These stories are clear and there are many who are vocal about them. It's not hard to find something to get behind, if you open your eyes everything is right there in front of you.

In the UK it it doesn't seem quite as obvious. It feels like I am going to need to dig a little deeper, work a little harder, and think a little more broadly about how I put together a campaign.

I have been keeping a close eye on the national news for the last couple of weeks and there are some obvious themes that come through, time after time. They are not so different to the umbrella themes that I was working on in South Africa, including:

• Occupational Health

• Modern Slavery

• Corporate Accountability

• Environmental Justice

• Access to Healthcare

The stories that fall under these themes are perhaps more nuanced and less extreme on first glance, but there are still victims that need a voice, still perpetrators that need to be challenged, still policies that need to be updated.

On top of the themes that I have set out above, there are other issues that need exploring including: unemployment, online safety, mental health, tolerance towards minority groups, housing, immigration and the right to protest.

What else am I leaving out?

My stories are people-driven. They necessitate multiple personal accounts that are compiled into a powerful series, exploring a single issues or event within these given themes.

A good example of this would be the Post Office scandal. That's a story which has thousands of people who have been affected, all of who deserve a voice; all of who need to be seen and have a story that needs to be heard.

Are there themes/issues/stories in the UK that would benefit from my style of photographic advocacy? Let me know in the comments below.