United Kingdom • Born in 1994

England on the Margins

There’s the England of Kings and Queens, lords and castles. And then there’s the other England, inherited from the Industrial Revolution, mining and the Victorian era. The England immortalised by novelist Charles Dickens and filmmaker Ken Loach. The England of food banks, welfare centres, working men’s clubs and dingy pubs; the England that’s crumbling on the outskirts of the big cities. These red-brick neighbourhoods, ravaged by economic crises and deindustrialisation, are home to marginalised communities.

This is the England that Mary Turner has been documenting for years. She has been busy capturing the lives of the people we never think about for a number of newspapers, including The New York Times. These are the people who live in neighbourhoods that tourists don’t visit, people who are overlooked or scorned because of their accent. Mary Turner explores their reality, as she does for the Travelling, Irish and Gypsy communities.

Her work never descends into the miserablism that sometimes blights social photography. She wins the trust of families who are used to feeling unwanted, and refuses to exploit their distress simply to strengthen her images. Sentimentality is banished, too. Her photos are raw, unvarnished and the product of patience and methodical journalism. This is work that puts people at the centre, without twisting the facts or bringing personal prejudice to bear.

It’s not the most glamorous form of photojournalism, but it is very important. Its origins lie in humanist photography and the great social photographic surveys of the last century. Seeing and accepting the existence of those on the margins is the first step towards doing them justice. By documenting this marginal England, Mary Turner reminds us that a country is more than just a picture postcard image; it is also, and most importantly, the reflection of the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens.

LABYRINTHE VÉGÉTAL