Jim Mortram’s Small Town Inertia is an intimate exploration of the people living in his hometown of Dereham in Norfolk, England. As one of Norfolk’s most deprived towns, Dereham serves as a microcosm reflecting a broader narrative of British communities struggling in the face of welfare and health care cuts. Mortram’s subjects consist of people united in their shared experiences of poverty and social exclusion, yet simultaneously isolated in navigating their personal pasts and present challenges. Mortram immortalises these people’s lives in the act of commemoration - their faces and voices suspended in time as a form of oral history, testifying to political failures.
— Josephine Ellis
