Joanne Coates storytelling freelancer

Recently visual artist, Joanne Coates delivered a talk focussing on the way in which she uses photography to communicate and discuss stories relating to the working-class, focusing on themes of poverty, wealth, identity and power and how she uses her skills as a story-telling photographer to document this and create a voice for the working class.

Joanne grew up in Yorkshire, so the working-class background was something in which she had experienced first hand, the talk focussed on her knowledge on the socioeconomic term through growing up and how she felt that the working-class were often ignored within the photographic industry, whether that being the photographer themselves or more specifically the lack of stories on working-class people.

Joanne decided to take action on this ignorance towards the working-class people and began to work closely with local communities to document their lives and tell their stories, creating a voice for these people. Coates’ personal work sparked attention from publications and organisations which allowed her to be commissioned to create work in a similar way, this allowed Coates to create the story-telling photography she wanted to whilst being paid to do so, which helps fund the personal work and gain more attention surrounding it.

The main things that this talk concluded was that commercial work is priced higher than editorial and is a good way to show unique methods of creating images, whilst being paid. And also the way Joanne Coates came from a working-class background and continued to work with working-class, shows the importance of staying grounded and never forgetting where you came from.