Tom WOOD

Snatch out of time

Throughout his Liverpudlian peregrinations, Tom Wood pays more than particular attention to others. They are him–fragments of what his life could have been, with its fair share of lost illusions, unfulfilled dreams, and beautiful moments. Tom Wood and his photographs are one and the same. Not only is he a brilliant observer, he puts himself in his characters’ shoes. He merges with them. During the shooting process, the photographer and his models share a common sensibility. This moment may seem insignificant, fleeting, stolen even, and yet it is as one with the sensual world. Photography lies in this ambivalence. In seeking to define the relationship between Tom Wood and the crowd, it becomes clear that his purpose is to combine his practice with these moments of life.

Tom Wood turns each image into a symbolic moment capable of representing the whole, that is, a complete, meaningful, and poetic world. The study of social relationships prevails without any didactic element.

Tom Wood’s photographs are full of details, meticulous portraits creating an aesthetics of continuity to which the practice of re-use testifies. His peripatetic approach to photography leads him to detect variations within the very situation he has already experienced–hence this sense of déjà vu when repetition becomes part of the narrative matrix. From series to series, enunciative changes are few and far between, and this world remains as if it were identical, not frozen but preserving its essence. The work itself, which is made of daily collages and fragmentary series joined together but never complete, has been remarkably consistent over the years.

In unfolding the same narrative successfully over time, Tom Wood has created an unequalled contemporary saga.

François Cheval

Liverpool

Family Likeness

Shipyard

Irish Work

Exhibitions

2022

Snatch out of time

galerie SIT DOWN

11.18.2022 – 01.14.2023

Révélations (group show) 

PARIS PHOTO Fair

11.10.2022 – 11.13.2022

2021

Remember Nature (exposition collective) 

PARIS PHOTO Fair

11.11.2021 – 11.14.2021 

Happy Birthday Tom!

SIT DOWN gallery

01.23.2021 – 02.20.2021

2019

Family Likeness

galerie SIT DOWN

11.06.2019 – 12.21.2019

Mothers, Daughters, Sisters.

Les Rencontres d’Arles

07.01.2019 – 08.25.2019

Solo show

Photo London

15.05.2019 – 19.05.2019

2017

Solo show

PARIS PHOTO Fair

03.11.2017 – 12.11.2017

2015

Cynefin, les paysages gallois 

SIT DOWN gallery

10.11.2015 – 20.12.2015

2011

1978 – 2003 : Les années Liverpool

SIT DOWN gallery

05.11.2011 – 21.01.2012

Biography

Tom Wood, a photographer whom Martin Parr described in 1998 as “the unsung genius of British photography”, is originally from Ireland and has spent most of his life in Liverpool.
Known by the public as the “Photie Man “* (the guy with the camera) so much so that he and his camera have become part of the Liverpool landscape. The artist has been crisscrossing the smallest corners of his city on foot or by bus since the mid-1970s. The latter is the constitutive means of locomotion of his photography as his books “Bus Odyssey” and “All Zones off Peak” testify.

For almost thirty years, the street has been the framework of his photographic research.
This work, nourished by his daily life, is situated between documentary, life experience and visual research. His images, mostly taken with his Leica, alternating color and black and white, reveal the complicity he has with his subjects. He is one of them, lives like them, blends in with them. “He touches the intimate because he does not attack intimacy”, freeing himself from photographic constraints and authorizing himself a true visual freedom.

With Martin Parr, Chris Killip and a few others of the same generation, Tom Wood has largely contributed to the English social photography movement that has developed following the punk explosion in reaction to the Thatcher years.

 

Press

Articles (selection)

2021    
« Je n’ai pas le permis de conduire, je photographie ce qui m’entoure  » La balade irlandaise de Tom Wood, Le Monde, November 2021

2019    
«Mères, filles, sœurs » L’hommage de Tom Wood aux femmes, Fisheye, July 2019
Photographie : douceurs arlésienne, Grazia, July 2019
Rencontres d’Arles : les immanquables de l’édition 2019, Le Point, July 2019
Photographie : nos 12 expositions préférées aux Rencontres d’Arles, Le Monde, Juillet 2019
Les coups de cœur de Polka aux Rencontres d’Arles, Polka, Juillet 2019
The big picture: Liverpool’s mothers go to market, The Guardian, Juin 2019

2018     
Femme des années 80, Grazia, Novembre 2018

2014    
BBC News – Photographer Tom Wood’s landscapes
“What do Artits do all day” BBC Four, Fevrier 2014 (vidéo)
Everett, Lucinda, The Telegraph Culture, 5 September        

2013    
Tom Wood- Britain. 1973–2012, MAMM

2012   
Tom Wood’s Men and women in picturesO’Hagen, Sean, The Guardian, London 
Tom Wood’s men and womenCoomes, PhilBBC News in pictures 10 October
Tom Wood, bus repetitaOllier, Brigitte, Liberation, Paris, 29/06/2012
L’odyssée de Tom WoodPoiret, Dominique, Libération, Paris, 30/06/2012

2009     
Working Class HeroWais, Alain, French, Issue15

2003       
PhotiemanHickling, Alfred, The Guardian, London, 26/6/03
Tom Wood : Making SenseFletcher, Jane, Source, Iss.36, Belfast

2002       
Looking for LoveSmith, Roberta, The New York Times, 13/12/02 

2000       
OuvertureDrost, Ralf, Flash Art, Milan, Italy XXXIII, May-June, p109