“Earning a living has got nothing to do with you as a person.”
— Joiner, quoted in Idle Hands, John Burnett
I’ve spent twenty years making sense of numbers as a social scientist. But this doesn’t make sense anymore. I’m also a photographer, an avid reader and someone who can’t leave a question alone once its taken hold.
My name is James. I work as an analyst in local government in Stoke-on-Trent — turning evidence into decisions, complexity into something useful. It’s work I believe in. But data has limits. It tells you what happened, rarely why. It counts people but doesn’t listens to them. That gap is what this site is about.
My photographic practice is rooted in the documentary tradition — long-term, research-based and grounded in community. It combines portraiture and environmental with audio to weave a narrative between people’s lived experience and the broader structures that shape it. The work takes time deliberately. It resists easy conclusions.
This site documents the research as it develops — the reading, the thinking, the images and the dead ends.
The posts cover books I’m reading, photographs I’m making and ideas I can’t leave alone. The thread connecting them is a single question I keep returning to, at work and away from it: What is the story behind the numbers?
The project
I’m developing a practice-based long term project rooted in Stoke-on-Trent, combining documentary photography, interviews and a written thesis. The working title is Vocational Identity and Meaningful Work in Post-Industrial Stoke-on-Trent.
The core question: how do people construct meaning, dignity and contribution through work — or its absence — as the city continues its long transition away from the industries that defined it? The project deliberately resists the “left behind” framing. Stoke is more interesting, colourful and complicated.
What you’ll find here
Book notes — annotated responses to the reading list feeding the research: post-industrial Britain, class, work, documentary photography and social science methodology. Honest about what’s useful and what isn’t.
Field notes — photography, observations and reflections from developing the project in Stoke and beyond.
Ideas — occasional longer thinking on the questions the project raises, drawn from over 20 years working at the intersection of data, policy and public services.
If you work in public services, research post-industrial communities, make documentary work, or are navigating the territory between practitioner and researcher — this site is made with you in mind.
Get in touch
Find me on Instagram or connect on LinkedIn. I’d be glad to hear from anyone working on similar things.