A Rural Lifeline

February 4, 2022

Joanne Coates is a photographic storyteller from a working-class background. Based between Yorkshire and Scotland, she depicts everyday stories with a documentary approach. Apart from this, Coates has also done work in the commercial sector with clients including the BBC, Vice, Financial Times, The Guardian, and more. Coronavirus: A Rural Lifeline in North Yorkshire shows how rural communities, away from the hub of the big city, managed to cope with isolation when social distancing became the n

Recent Stories

Beyond the sea
Great Britain, being an island, is surrounded by water. The outlier of Europe, the Brits have always had a thing for their coastal towns. Bournemouth, Brighton, the Kent coastline, are the ones that come to mind first. The sea is hugely important for many industries — tourism, fishing, transport. Often mocked
Alex Micu
Legacy
Legacy is a response to the impact of the year of City of Culture 2017 in her hometown of Hull, within the city’s spaces and places. The work is a synthesis of careful research done within the various communities and organizations involved that were affected during and after the impact of the year of culture.
Verity Adriana
Chance Encounters in The Valley of Lights
Chance Encounters in the Valley of Lights tells the story of an unsolved extraterrestrial case from 1980s Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Photographer Rik Moran combines original imagery with never-before-seen archival material to investigate the possible alien abduction of PC Alan Godfrey. In illuminating one of small-town England’s most unlikely protagonists, Chance Encounters unearths another other-worldly mystery along the way.
Rik Moran
Appalachia. Mountaintops to Moonscapes
Appalachia, Virginia is mainly known for two reasons. The first is that it’s an incredibly resource-rich territory; it supplies two-thirds of the nation’s coal reserves. Coal is an outdated energy source, which is damaging to the environment as it’s slowly being phased throughout the whole world in
Alan Gignoux
Balaganza
A spotlight on the drag queens in the only gay bar in Lithuania. Forcedly hidden from the public eye in the post-Soviet country, these performances seem too deliberately shocking for the part of the society.
Milda Vysniauskaite
Coastal Mammoth
The 2011 tsunami caused an unprecedented amount of damage, chaos and grief. Everyone in Japan was affected in one way or another. The Japanese government soon began to erect a gigantic wall at the cost of billions in the northeast region of the country after the earthquake that caused the tsunami.
Pengkuei Ben Huang
The losses to be never ever forgiven
No words and tears are enough. Evgeny Maloletka [https://www.evgenymaloletka.com/], a Ukrainian freelance photojournalist based in Kyiv, tells the story of the Mariupol attack via the death of a small girl who was brutally attacked with her parents. A list of answers to the questions "What can I do to help?" [https://www.mnngful.com/stand-with-ukraine] Reached Ukrainian friends, checked the sources and give you a list of options, direct links to organizations where to donate. The list is bei
Evgeny Maloletka
The Image of a Place
Three winters ago Anne Erhard’s father unexpectedly passed away on a journey far away from home. A journey which, like all journeys, he was meant to return from. His untimely death was distressing to his young daughter but at the same time it reminded her how fragile human life is — we never know when or how we will meet our demise. The only certainty is that eventually, we will. > Death is a question of containment. For a long time, attempts at understanding felt like trying to empty the ocean
Anne Erhard
The day after hell
Sergi Mykhalchu is a Ukrainian Cinematographer, photographer, traveler. The capital of Ukraine Kyiv is been bombed for the last 3 days. Almost 4 million people are normally leave here. Today they all are hiding in the shelters beneath the earth. Kyiv is one of the IT capitals in the world. The biggest software engineering centers which serve companies worldwide are located here. That's how Kyiv looks today. A list of answers to th
Sergi Mykhalchuk
Small Town Inertia
Jim Mortram’s Small Town Inertia is an ongoing project which shines a light on the real life consequences the so-called “A-word” is continuing to have on communities, over a decade since its introduction. It wreaks havoc on the most vulnerable in our society and it targets those who can least afford basic necessities.
Jim Mortram

mnngful Originals

mnngful Members

Zak Waters
UK
,
London

Photographer, Founder of CAMERA & Course Leader in FE Photography & Multimedia.

Nieves Mingueza
ES
,

Artist, based in London. Her conceptually driven and intimate practice often interweaves images with research, documentary photography, archival material, collage, text, film, and installation. Bridging the space between the personal and political, she explores and activates the archives to address social and gender issues. In 2019 her first monograph book was published by IIKKI books editorial. Her work has been exhibited widely including installations at Royal Academy of Arts, Saatchi Gallery, Copeland Gallery, Tate Britain (UK), Fondazione Giorgio Cini (IT) and PhotoEspana (SP), among others. Mingueza’s work has been reviewed by multiple magazines as Der greif, Lenscratch, Blind, L’oeil de la Photographie, Metal, All About Photo, Analog, Yogurt, fisheye, Witty and Lensculture, among others.

Elena Kalyuzhnaya
RU
,
St. Petersburg

Documentary photographer based in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Student of Academy of documentary photography “Fotografika” in Saint-Petersburg. Originally from a small town in the south of Russia, Elena appreciates the authenticity of the rural area and its traditions. The human place in society, PTSD emotions, and life in post-war and problematic regions are the main topics of her work. Elena’s work was published in Dodho Magazine, Takie Dela, Republic, and Regnum publishing. Elena is a silver prizer of Budapest international Contest 2020 in the student category. Also, her work was a part of the Ariano Film festival.

Joanne Coats
UK
,
Dales

Documentary photographer based in the North of England. She is interested in modes of production, rurality, and class inequality. Her practice is as much about process, participation and working with communities as photography. Coates’ key themes are Northern culture in rural places and working-class life. In 2020 she was commissioned as Artist in Residence at Berwick Visual Arts. In 2021 she was commissioned as an artist working on the Tees-Swale project looking at social justice and the rural, she was also a winner of the Jerwood /Photoworks award. Joanne’s work has been exhibited both in the UK and internationally in venues including The Royal Albert Hall, Reveal-T Photography Festival, Cork Photo Festival and Somerset House. In 2012 during her Foundation year she was awarded a Metro Imaging Portfolio Prize, a Magnum Portfolio Review and The Ideastap innovators award. Upon graduation, she was awarded Magenta Flash Forward Top 30 emerging talent in the UK, 2016. Joanne was one of the artists working in Hull, for the UK City of Culture in 2017. She was one of the 209 female photographers to photograph MPs for the centenary of the vote. She is a member of Women Photograph. A co-founder of Form Collective.

Tony Fouhse
CA
,
Ottawa

Photographer based in Ottawa, Canada His work has attracted international attention and been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The British Journal of Photography, American Photography 26, CV Photo, Time magazine, Wired and Vie des Arts. His photographs have been exhibited internationally, most recently at the Noorderlicht International Fotofestival in Groningen, The Netherlands (2019); Cortona On The Move photo festival, Italy and, as part of the Beyond Addiction/Reframing Recovery exhibition, in NYC and Rochester, N.Y. (2020).

Floriana Avellino
IT
,

Barry Rosenthal
US
,
New York

Fine art photographer and sculptor. He studied photography at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio and at the Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York with notable photographers Emmet Gowin and George Tice. Barry‘s fine art images can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Springfield Museum of Fine Art Springfield, Massachusetts. Barry is a resident of Lower Manhattan, along with his wife and daughter.

Hussain Ali
UK
,
London

British-Iraqi documentary photographer based in London. His work is rooted in our connection to the land and social identity. He is interested in documenting stories that inspire us to consider our relationship with nature and wildlife.

Neal Haddaway
UK
,
London

I am a documentary photographer/photojournalist and researcher working on topics related to environmental and social justice. My work focuses on human's connections with nature, and society's efforts to protect our planet.

Jan Enkelmann
UK
,
London

Documentary, street and travel photographer He is dividing his time between commercial work and personal projects. Most of Jan’s photography work is concerned with observations of people in public spaces.

Bojan Fürst
CA
,
St. John's

I am a photographer, writer, radio maker and geographer based in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada with a passion for documentary work of all kind because "The things of this world exist, they are; you can't refuse them."

Alan Gignoux
UK
,
London

Documentary photographer born in the United States and now based in London. Gignoux has been working as a professional documentary photographer with photographic agencies and independently since 2000. He also works as a cameraman on documentary film projects. Recent film work includes “We made Every Living Thing from Water” and “A Letter from Venezuela.” His award-winning work has been exhibited all over the world.

Johan Brooks
JP
,
Tokyo

Documentary and street photographer based out of Tokyo, Japan. Born in the UK, he grew up in NYC, and eventually found his way to Japan where he has been living for over 10 years. He is a member of the VoidTokyo photography collective. His photography is on permanent display at the Crunchyroll HQ in San Francisco and was recently exhibited at Terranova House in Tokyo.

Chloe Juno
UK
,

Curator, creative consultant, visual artist, documentary Researcher, and Co-Lead Documenting Britain, project manager, producer, photographer, and photo editor with a real love of photography and life stories. Primary focus documentary photography with 15 years experience as a photo editor and project manager editing award-winning photography. Current long-term photo project ‘Someones Rubbish’ 5 years of daily photos looking at life now via the objects people discard.

Amy Romer
CA
,

Documentary photographer, journalist telling compelling stories that elevate issues around human rights, social justice and the environment – particularly climate change. That’s why I’m passionate about helping social purpose organizations tell powerful stories through photography and video.

Stories worth seeing

mnngful is a platform supporting independent documentary photography & photojournalism.

Thanks to passionate storytellers, we learn about matters that otherwise stay neglected. Stories that matter, but have not been covered enough are captured and told by passion-driven photographers and journalists.

They create because they care about the world they live in and tell us about matters beyond our eyesight.Their work is often driven by pure enthusiasm, fuelled by own beliefs and dreams for a better world. That's why such independent work is worth special attention.

mnngful is here to support the meaningful stories they tell.

Read more