Tom Wood (photographer)

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

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" 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." Phill Coomes, writing for BBC News, said "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." 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".

Wood was born and brought up in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. He trained as a conceptual painter at Leicester Polytechnic from 1973–76. Extensive viewing of experimental films led him to photography, in which he is self-taught. He has explored a "multiplicity of formally divergent themes and quotations" with an approach "much more fluid than the current conventions of post-Conceptual photography or photojournalism dictate". In 1978 Wood moved to Merseyside, and in 2003 to North Wales where he works as a part-time lecturer in photography at Coleg Llandrillo Cymru.

Wood photographed mainly in Liverpool and Merseyside from 1978–2001, primarily street photography "on the streets, in pubs and clubs, markets, workplaces, parks and football grounds" of "strangers, mixed with neighbours, family and friends." At the same time he also worked on a long-term study of the landscape in the west of Ireland, North Wales and Merseyside. 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. This was followed by All Zones Off Peak (1998), which is described in The Photobook: A History vol. 2. 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 major retrospective book Photie Man (2005), 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).

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

• Looking for Love: Chelsea Reach. Manchester: Cornerhouse, 1989. ISBN 978-0948797453.
• All Zones off Peak. Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 1998. ISBN 978-1899235865.
• People. Cologne: Wienand, 1999. 978-3879096664.
• Tom Wood. Saar, Germany: Galerie im Buergerhaus Neunkirchen, 2000. ISBN 978-3879096664. Exhibition catalogue. English and German.
• Bus Odyssey. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hajte Cantz, 2001. ISBN 978-3775711227.
• 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.

• What Do Artists Do All Day?. BBC, 2014.

• "Terence Donovan Award" from the Royal Photographic Society, 1998.
• "Prix Dialogue de l'Humanite", Les Recontres d'Arles, France, 2002.

Solo exhibitions

• 1996: International Centre of Photography, New York.
• 1996: Galerie du Jour Agnes b., Paris.
• 1998: The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
• 1998: Galerie F.M. Schwartz/photokina, Cologne.
• 1999: Galerie Albrecht, Munich.
• 1999: Gallery of Photography, Dublin.
• 2000: Thomas Erben Gallery, New York.
• 2000: Galerie im Buergerhaus, Neunkirchen/Saar.
• 2000: Kunstverein, Ulm, Germany.
• 2001: Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Germany.
• 2002: Thomas Erben Gallery, New York.
• 2002: Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, Germany.
• 2002: Stadtische Galerie, Wolfsburg.
• 2002: Kunsthalle, Wilhelmshaven.
• 2003: C/O, Berlin, Germany.
• 2004: Kunsthalle, Bremen, Germany.
• 2004: Centre de la Photographie, Geneva.
• 2004: Le Centre Cultural Suisse, Paris. Part of Paris Photo.
• 2005: Photieman, Le château d’eau, pôle photographique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France.
• 2005: Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
• 2005: Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland (with Larry Sultan).
• 2005: The National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• 2006: The Approach, London.
• 2012: Men and Women, The Photographers' Gallery, London.
• 2013: Thomas Erben Gallery, New York.
• 2013: Tom Wood – DPA Work, Contemporary Art Space Chester, University of Chester, Chester, 25 April – 14 May 2013. Photographs of Rainhill Hospital (1988-1990), commissioned by the Documentary Photography Archive (DPA), Manchester and made before the closure of the institution.
• 2013: Tom Wood – DPA Work, Contemporary Art Space Chester, University of Chester, Chester, 16 May – 26 May 2013. Photographs of Cammell Laird shipyard (1993-1996) in Liverpool, commissioned by the DPA and made before the closure of the institution.
• 2013: Tom Wood: Photographs 1973 - 2013, 8 March – 16 June 2013. National Media Museum, Bradford.
• 2014: Landscapes, Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales. Curated by Mark Durden.

Selected group exhibitions

• 1994: Street Photography, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
• 1996: Blindspot, Paolo Baldicci Gallery, New York.
• 1996: Inside Out, Galerie du Jour Agnes b., Paris (with Richard Billingham and Paul Seawright).
• 1999: Internationale Fototage, Herten, Germany.
• 2000: Les Photographies Collectionnees par agnes b, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris.
• 2001: The Sidewalk Never Ends, Art Institute of Chicago, USA.
• 2002: Becks Futures, ICA, London.
• 2002: Zipp, Kassler Kunstverein, Kassel.
• 2003: Garry Winogrand and Tom Wood, Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne.
• 2003: We go round and round…, COMME CA Gallery, New York.
• 2003: Sad Beautiful Life, C/O Berlin, Germany.
• 2003: L’amour Toujours, galerieXprssns, Hamburg.
• 2004: Wirklich Wahr! Realitatsvesprechen von Fotographien, Ruhrlandmuseum, Essen.
• 2004: Ruestrassen; Schrumpfende Stadte, Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
• 2004: Sammlung Kunne, Kunsthalle, Bremen, Germany.
• 2004: Relating To Photography, Fotografie Forum International (FFi), Frankfurt.
• 2004: Street Life, Rotonda Galerie, Cologne.
• 2004: Independents 04, Liverpool Biennial, UK.
• 2004: Native Land, Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno; Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff.
• 2005: 24 x 36, Leica Gallery, New York.
• 2006: HyperDesign, Shanghai Biennale, China.
• 2006: Closed Eyes, Museum for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark.
• 2006: Shrinking Cities, Pratt Manhattan Gallery/Van Alen Institute, New York.
• 2006: People and Places, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
• 2006: La Boum II, Sies+ Hoke Galerie, Dusseldof.
• 2007: How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, London.
• 2007: Centre of the Creative Universe, Liverpool and the Avant-Garde, Tate Gallery Liverpool.
• 2007: On View, Photo London, Old Billingsgate, London.
• 2008: ParrWorld, Haus der Kunst, Munich.
• 2008: Baby, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
• 2012: Third Floor Gallery, Cardiff, with Martin Parr.

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

• International Centre of Photography, New York.
• Museum of Modern Art, New York.
• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
• The National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen.
• Municipal Gallery, Wolfsburg, Germany.
• National Media Museum, Bradford.
• Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.