"Strive for the gain of all" - Gainsborough

You didn’t come this far to stop

Strive for the Gain of All is a long-form documentary photography project exploring the visual consequences of economic decline and urban neglect in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. Employing a New Topographics aesthetic—characterised by flat perspectives, neutral tones, and a refusal of visual drama—the work examines the structural erosion of the high street as a spatial symptom of austerity, inequality, and post-industrial disinvestment.

Drawing on David Harvey’s theory of uneven geographical development (1989), the project situates the town as part of capitalism’s spatial fix, where peripheral places are abandoned in favour of concentrated growth elsewhere. The depopulated architectural focus aligns with the principles of Doreen Massey’s relational geography (2005), rejecting the notion of isolated localities and instead framing Gainsborough as shaped by wider economic flows and policy decisions.

Informed by critical human geography (Cloke, Crang and Goodwin, 2014) and the ethics of visual representation, the work resists nostalgia and romanticisation. Future development will incorporate environmental portraits and personal testimonies from residents, introducing lived experience and memory into the visual record—an approach influenced by Ariella Azoulay’s civil contract of photography (2008), which foregrounds consent, co-authorship, and the political responsibility of the image-maker.

Ultimately, the project asks: what does a town look like when it is no longer invested in—and how might photography trace not just what has been lost, but what still remains?