Tom Wood (photographer)

Thomas Wood (born 14 January 1951) is an Irish street photographer, portraitist and landscape photographer,[1][2] based in Britain. Wood is best known for his photographs in Liverpool and Merseyside from 1978 to 2001, "on the streets, in pubs and clubs, markets, workplaces, parks and football grounds" of "strangers, mixed with neighbours, family and friends."[3] His work has been published in several books, been widely shown in solo exhibitions and received awards.

Wood in 2015

Life and work

Wood was born and brought up in County Mayo in the west of Ireland.[1] He trained as a conceptual painter at Leicester Polytechnic from 1973 to 1976. Extensive viewing of experimental films led him to photography, in which he is self-taught.[4] He has explored a "multiplicity of formally divergent themes and quotations"[5] with an approach "much more fluid than the current conventions of post-Conceptual photography or photojournalism dictate".[6] In 1978 Wood moved to Merseyside, and in 2003 to North Wales[1] where he works as a part-time lecturer in photography at Coleg Llandrillo Cymru.[7][8]

Wood photographed mainly in Liverpool and Merseyside from 1978– to 2001, primarily street photography[3] "on the streets, in pubs and clubs, markets, workplaces, parks and football grounds" of "strangers, mixed with neighbours, family and friends."[3] At the same time he also worked on a long-term study of the landscape[1] in the west of Ireland, North Wales and Merseyside.[9] He has also worked with video on a daily basis since 1988, filming family life.

The pictures in Wood's first book and most famous series, Looking For Love (1989), show people up close and personal at the Chelsea Reach disco pub in New Brighton, Merseyside, where he photographed regularly between 1982 and 1985.[10] This was followed by All Zones Off Peak (1998), which is described in The Photobook: A History vol. 2.[11] All Zones Off Peak includes photographs from 18 years of riding the buses of Liverpool during his 1978 to 1996 'bus odyssey'—the images selected from about 100,000 negatives. People (1999), and the retrospective book Photie Man (2005),[12] made in collaboration with Irish artist Padraig Timoney, followed. His work is included in the revised edition of Bystander: the History of Street Photography (2001).[13]

Wood's first major British show, Men and Women, was at The Photographers' Gallery in London in 2012.[4] His first full UK retrospective was at the National Media Museum in Bradford in 2013.[3] His landscape photographs were exhibited for the first time in 2014.[14]

The critic Sean O'Hagan has described Wood as "a pioneering colourist", "a photographer for whom there are no rules" with an "instinctive approach to photographing people up close and personal"[10] and quotes photographer Simon Roberts saying Wood's photographs "somehow combine rawness and intimacy in a way that manages to avoid the accusations of voyeurism and intrusion that often dog work of this kind."[10][15] Phill Coomes of BBC News wrote that "wherever they were taken or made, his pictures seem always to have a trace of human existence, and at their centre they are about the lives that pass through the spaces depicted."[1] The New Yorker's photography critic, Vince Aletti, described Wood's style as "loose, instinctive and dead-on" adding "he makes Martin Parr look like a formalist".[4]

Publications
  • Looking for Love: Chelsea Reach. Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1989. ISBN 978-0948797453.
  • All Zones off Peak. Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 1998. ISBN 978-1899235865. With an afterword by Mark Holborn.
  • People. Cologne: Wienand, 1999. ISBN 978-3879096664. English and German text.
  • Tom Wood. Saar, Germany: Galerie im Buergerhaus Neunkirchen, 2000. ISBN 978-3879096664. Exhibition catalogue. English and German text.
  • Bus Odyssey. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hajte Cantz, 2001. ISBN 978-3775711227. Exhibition catalogue. With an essay by Sylvia Böhmer. German and English text.
  • Not Only Female…. Cologne: Schaden, 2004. ISBN 978-3932187407. Exhibition catalogue. With an essay by Joerg Bader, "Broken English Working Class Hero", in English and German.
  • Photie Man. Göttingen: Steidl, 2005. ISBN 978-3865210838.
  • F/M. Villeurbanne, France: 205. ISBN 978-2-919380-07-7. English and French text. With a preface by Gilles Verneret and text by Durden Mark. Edition of 750 copies. A subset of photographs from Photie Man.
  • Men and Women. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3869305707. A two volume collection.
  • The DPA Work. Göttingen: Steidl, 2014. A two-volume collection, one on Rainhill Hospital in Liverpool (1988–1990) and one on Cammell Laird shipyard (1993–1996) in Birkenhead, commissioned by the Documentary Photography Archive.
  • Termini. Guingamp, France: Gwinzegal, 2018. ISBN 979-10-94060-21-6. With three short texts by Paul Farley.
  • Women's Market. London: Stanley/Barker, 2018. ISBN 978-1-9164106-0-2. Photographs of the Great Homer Street market (Everton), 1978–1999. Edition of 1000 copies.[n 1]

Awards

TV appearances

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Collections

Wood's work is held in the following public collections:

See also

Notes
  1. Stanley/Barker's page about the book is here.

References
  1. Coomes, Phil (16 January 2014). "Photographer Tom Wood's landscapes". BBC News. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
  2. Everett, Lucinda (5 September 2014). "Interview: Tom Wood". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
  3. "Tom Wood: Photographs 1973-2013". The Daily Telegraph. 26 February 2013. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
  4. O'Hagan, Sean (12 October 2012). "Tom Wood: the people's maverick photographer". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 May 2015.
  5. Timoney, Padraig (January 1999). "Tom Wood". Frieze Magazine (44). Archived from the original on 15 June 2009. Retrieved 29 April 2009.
  6. Schwabsky, Barry (December 2000). "Tom Wood – Brief Article". Art Forum. Retrieved 29 April 2009.
  7. "Biscuit Tin Photo Archive". Oriel Mostyn. Archived from the original on 22 March 2014. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  8. "Tom Wood". LensCulture. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  9. "What Do Artists Do All Day?, Tom Wood". BBC. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  10. O'Hagan, Sean (8 May 2015). "Girls (and boys) just wanna have fun: smoke, sticky carpets and snogging in the 80s". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
  11. Parr, Martin; Badger, Gerry (7 October 2006). The Photobook: A History – Volume 2. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-4433-6.
  12. Grant, Ken. "foto8 Reviews: Photie Man". Retrieved 30 April 2009.
  13. Meyerowitz, Joel; Westerbeck , Colin (16 November 1994). Bystander: A History Of Street Photography. Bulfinch. ISBN 978-0-8212-1755-9.
  14. "Tom Wood – Landscapes". Oriel Mostyn. Archived from the original on 24 April 2014. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  15. Roberts, Simon (9 March 2010). "The Work of Tom Wood". Retrieved 8 May 2015.
  16. "Tom Wood". Technology In Art. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  17. "About Tom Wood". LensCulture. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  18. Coomes, Phil (3 October 2012). "Tom Wood's men and women". BBC News. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  19. "All Zones Off Peak". International Center of Photography. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  20. "Tom Wood". Thomas Erben Gallery. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  21. "Tom Wood: Bus Odyssey". Hatje Cantz. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  22. "Tom Wood 1951 Ireland". Photography Now. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  23. "Tom Wood". www.kunstforum.de. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  24. "Tom Wood: Photieman, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester". The Guardian. 26 June 2003. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
  25. "Tom Wood". C/O Berlin. 11 March 2015. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  26. GbR, Beutin & Günther. "Kunsthalle Bremen (Bremen) Ausstellung: Tom Wood - Photie Man. Photographien aus der Sammlung Bernd F. Künne". www.kunst-und-kultur.de. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  27. "Tom Wood" Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse. Accessed 24 September 2016
  28. "Musée de l'Elysée: Looking for Love". www.elysee.ch. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  29. "Tom Wood: Men and Women 21/11/13 - 15/01/14". 8 November 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  30. "Tom Wood – DPA Work". University of Chester. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
  31. "Tom Wood: Photographs 1973–2013". National Science and Media Museum. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  32. "Tom Wood: Photographs 1973-2013". 26 February 2013. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 3 May 2019 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  33. "The Sidewalk Never Ends: Street Photography Since the 1970's - Art Institute of Chicago - Absolutearts.com". www.absolutearts.com. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  34. "Photography: The Sidewalk Never Ends". The Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  35. "Photography Collection: Rotation 3". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  36. "Every Man and Woman is a Star - Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool museums". www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  37. "London Road, Liverpool". International Center of Photography. 31 January 2018. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  38. "Tom Wood". The Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  39. "Tom Wood's Photographs Now at the National Media Museum". yorkshiretimes.co.uk. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  40. "Parr and Wood - National Museums Liverpool, Liverpool museums, Liverpool museums". www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
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