Adversity And Inspiration

The greatest strength often looks like weakness

It's quite likely that while I'm writing this the postie will arrive with a package from an industrial estate in High Wycombe. While we're waiting let me tell you the story behind this project.

In 2023 I resigned from a job that I loved, supporting volunteers at a long established charity. I've always worked since I was a teenager, so that's been something like 27 years now. I've been an employee of various public sector and third sector organisations, as well as doing a lot of freelance work which involved observing how organisations are run and interviewing people about their experiences of those organisations. When I say therefore that the charity I resigned from was the most dysfunctional and toxic workplace I've ever witnessed, I say so from a position of not total ignorance.

My former employer claims that the programmes they deliver are "significantly influenced" by supporting those most in need with their mental health and wellbeing. Below is a photo of me after I collapsed with work-related stress as a direct result of how I was treated at this organisation, and in particular by its CEO.

Fig 3. Effects of work-related stress

The photo was shared with my line manager, but this was after over 2 years of raising my concerns about staff workload, burnout, disrespect, disorganisation, and the behaviour of the CEO. These concerns were routinely dismissed by management as just the way the organisation is and just the way he is.

At a meeting between the CEO, myself, and my line manager it was suggested that my burnout was the result of some inherent weakness on my part, and little to do with workplace culture, the CEO's behaviour, or working amongst the chaos of an organisation which my line manager had once described as "falling apart at the seams".

A few months after I started two members of staff on separate occasions described to me the CEO's behaviour as "gaslighting". Sometime later, having by then experienced first hand exactly what they meant, and seeing no prospect of a satisfactory resolution, I too resigned.

That's the short version. I'll spare you the gorier details.

After I got out I was awarded funding for the project you're reading about now. I want to reconnect with a way of working directly opposed to what I'd experienced. Being able to invest in film and processing means I can dig out some of my old cameras and work in a way which is far more humane. Analogue photography offers the chance to work at a more considered pace, to be more proprioceptive and therefore recover something that has been lost in the way we connect intellectually, artistically, and physically with the social world.

Coming from an organisation which put speed and quantity first, this project will help me refocus on quality and care.

And that's why I'm still sitting here nearly 10 hours after writing the opening paragraph. I guess the postie's not coming today, but that's okay. I'm very happy to sit back, relax, and wait.