In episode 254 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Tom Bradley.
Tom is a photojournalist, artist and the Founder of the project ‘Leprosy Eliminated?’.
In this project, he has taken pictures of people living with leprosy across the globe for the last 15 years. It includes people in 12 countries including Togo, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh and
India.
Until 2022, a country was declared eliminated of leprosy if fewer than 1 in 10,000 people have it – yet in somewhere like India, where the government declared leprosy in 2005, it means that there are more than 100,000 new cases of leprosy per year.
There are still countries in the world where leprosy detection is barely being done, or where figures are unknown, even ‘fiddled’ because governments are eager to reach this status of
having leprosy eliminated.
There are also areas where war has crippled leprosy programmes and it’s not seen as a priority in the rebuilding of a nation.
In this episode we discuss: how and why Tom got into photography and photojournalism, his
desire to cover the issue of leprosy and a history of the condition (including biblical history), why society has moved away from terms like ‘leper’ and the resilience and character Tom
needed to persist with photojournalism in times of financial hardship during his early years.
For Tom’s mental health journey, we discuss his privileged upbringing but also faced bullying in school from the ages of 9-10 years old.
He then went to secondary school, where he joined the school’s Christian Union and found a place where he could be himself, be accepted and move on from the bullying he went through at primary school.
We then talk about his desire to live a nomadic existence through his photojournalism career and where that comes from, personal growth and the importance of ‘stillness’ and having space in his life.
As always, #itsokaytovent
You can find out more about Tom’s work here.
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