Tom Wood might easily be categorized as a documentary or street photographer. His photographs fit comfortably within the finest tradition of a certain kind of “straight†photography: incisive, decisive visual moments extracted from the chaos of life and transformed, by the medium, into compelling images. To claim, then, that his photographs are receivers of sensations, ciphers for that which is intangible (not to mention invisible), could be deemed extraordinary. It is certainly ambitious. Photography, inherently, deals with what can be seen. Its mechanical attention to detail, its dependence on the referent—the object of its scrutiny—is what marks it as totally different from the other arts.
I discovered a good feature on Tom in Issue magazine, that includes quite a few pictures from his ‘Photie Man’ book, and an informative essay on his work. The aformentioned book is also reviewed at foto8 by Ken Grant. Ken, by the way, also attended the same course as I did, and is now documentary photography programme leader at Newport.
Comments 3
dave
thanks for giving me a mention in a previous post
i am a huge Tom Wood fan, I got a copy of Photie Man when I was in Tokyo last year, its a fab book i had not come across him previously, will look forward to any further revelations
cheers
andrew
Posted 12 Apr 2007 at 12:14 am ¶well, I just happened to be in Liverpool yesterday, and decided to visit the Tate Modern. There is a large photography exhibition on the 2nd floor where some of Tom’s images can be seen, alongside other work by many big names.
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/centreofthecreativeuniverse/default.shtm
Dave.
Posted 14 Apr 2007 at 7:28 pm ¶Dave, I’m in the photie at The Chelsea wagging my finger at a girl I knew. Tom and Martin were always around and we got used to them.
Posted 10 Jun 2007 at 4:12 pm ¶I too went the Tate and the experience set me off and I wrote a song about The Photie Man which you can hear at my site.
Best wishes
Steve