Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working with the esteemed Nuffield Trust, creating new staff portraits and photographing their annual Health Policy Summit.
The Nuffield Trust is an independent health charity founded in 1940. Set up to coordinate the activities of all hospitals operating outside London, the Nuffield Trust helped inspire the creation of the National Health Service, with one of its early surveys being utilised as a key reference document in the establishment of the NHS. The founding principles of providing evidence-based research and policy analysis remain core to the trust's values.
[In light of the seemingly constant electoral instability gripping the UK, I've chosen to offer a few personal views and thoughts to accompany examples of photography in this post]
The last few years have seen a well co-ordinated rise in paleoconservative populism on both sides of the Atlantic, with reasoned voices being increasingly drowned out by a largely unfounded soundbite designed solely to propagate click bait, reinforce echo chambers and foster a silo mentality void of meaningful fact checking. This new politick spilled over into mainstream consciousness with the advent of the EU referendum and, unsurprisingly, NHS funding became one of the key campaign battlegrounds for parties and ideologues of all political flavours.
I was becoming increasingly disheartened with this new political landscape and trying to navigate daily news cycles and associated social media was leaving little room for optimism, so the timing of working with the Nuffield Trust was very welcome indeed, as it was refreshing to engage in conversation with a group of experts striving to improve the quality of health care in the UK. I'm interested in an expert's view point as experts hone their skills, understand variables, encourage nuanced conversation and help society in far reaching ways - often posing a qualified threat to the aforementioned populist agenda.
