Tom Wood
Photographer

Although Wood photographed working class Liverpool exclusively for many years, his primary interest is not documentary. Trained as a painter at the conceptually orientated Leicester Polytechnic from 1973–76, his first exploration of lens-based media was through extensive viewing of experimental films. His photography has explored a “multiplicity of formally divergent themes and quotations”, his approach “much more fluid than the current conventions of post-Conceptual photography or photojournalism dictate.” He has worked with color negative film continuously since 1976, while often using both black and white and color in different locations.

The pictures in his first book, Looking For Love (1989) were made between 1982 and 1985, and features the infamous Chelsea Reach nightclub. This was followed by the highly acclaimed All Zones Off Peak (1998) featuring pictures resulting from spending eighteen years riding the buses of Liverpool during his 1978 to 1996 ‘bus odyssey’ – the images selected from 100,000 negatives. The book People followed this in 1999, and the major retrospective book Photie Man made in collaboration with Irish artist Padraig Timoney, was published in 2005.

His work is also included in the revised edition of Bystander: the History of Street Photography (2001) and his book All Zones Off Peak featured in The Photo Book: A History vol.2 (2006). Wood received the Terence Donovan Award from the Royal Photographic Society in 1998 and the Prix Dialogue de l’Humanité at Les Recontres d’Arles, France in 2002.

Currently working part time as a lecturer in photography at Coleg Llandrillo in north Wales.

[LensCulture]

Tom Wood
Photographer

Although Wood photographed working class Liverpool exclusively for many years, his primary interest is not documentary. Trained as a painter at the conceptually orientated Leicester Polytechnic from 1973–76, his first exploration of lens-based media was through extensive viewing of experimental films. His photography has explored a “multiplicity of formally divergent themes and quotations”, his approach “much more fluid than the current conventions of post-Conceptual photography or photojournalism dictate.” He has worked with color negative film continuously since 1976, while often using both black and white and color in different locations.

The pictures in his first book, Looking For Love (1989) were made between 1982 and 1985, and features the infamous Chelsea Reach nightclub. This was followed by the highly acclaimed All Zones Off Peak (1998) featuring pictures resulting from spending eighteen years riding the buses of Liverpool during his 1978 to 1996 ‘bus odyssey’ – the images selected from 100,000 negatives. The book People followed this in 1999, and the major retrospective book Photie Man made in collaboration with Irish artist Padraig Timoney, was published in 2005.

His work is also included in the revised edition of Bystander: the History of Street Photography (2001) and his book All Zones Off Peak featured in The Photo Book: A History vol.2 (2006). Wood received the Terence Donovan Award from the Royal Photographic Society in 1998 and the Prix Dialogue de l’Humanité at Les Recontres d’Arles, France in 2002.

Currently working part time as a lecturer in photography at Coleg Llandrillo in north Wales.

[LensCulture]

  • METAmorphosis / OGR Award
    May 17, 2023
    Artissima / OGR
    Turin, Italy
    Launched during the 2022 edition of Artissima, the METAmorphosis project is the second episode of Beyond Production – a conceptual platform born from the collaboration between Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT and Artissima, in dialogue with the OGR Award, with the aim of stimulating and promoting reflections on the most innovative trends in contemporary art. (more…)
  • Impossible Music
    Sep 30 – Dec 10, 2023
    Miller Institute for Contemporary Art
    Pittsburgh, USA
    Opening September 30 at the Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, Impossible Music brings together sounds, scores, sculptures, video, and live performances to extend discourses on conceptual and experimental music and explore its intersections across different art forms. Marking the first joint curatorial collaboration of curator Candice Hopkins, artist, composer Raven Chacon, with curator, researcher, Stavia Grimani, the interdisciplinary group exhibition features work by boundary-defying composers, artists, (more…)
  • Nonmemory
    Sep 15, 2023 – Jan 14, 2024
    Hauser & Wirth
    Los Angeles, USA
    Through a variety of media and material, the artists in this exhibition use space as the repository for dreams, fantasies, traumas and anxieties, while offering opportunities to re-imagine and recreate reality. The title of the exhibition Nonmemory, takes direct inspiration from Kelley’s use of the term, a way of treating, reordering and representing the complex and unstable relationship between memory, space and identity. (more…)