Tom Wood – Photie Man

Tom Wood is an Irish photographer, who lived and worked in different places in the UK, mainly in Liverpool. The book consists of images of the town’s people in clubs, streets, beaches, everywhere of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, friends, lovers etc. His book is a way of showing others, a small story of strangers lives.

The title of this photobook is ‘Photie Man’, inspired by the nickname he was known as by the locals who he would take photographs of, and who would see him out always with his camera.

The cover of the book is a light brown/ beige colour with thick black writing, making his name more prominent. However, the title ‘Photie Man’ is in red bringing the attention to it. There is also a doodle-like illustration depicting a man, adding more to the cover. The cover is printed onto the paper, the designing wrapping around to the back cover.

This photobook is made up of a type of paper which isn’t quite glossy but has the same feel and is more satin. It’s slightly bigger than an A4 piece of paper and has over 200 pages with around 500 photographs. The images inside are presented in both portrait and landscape, images are displayed across a whole page, some have the paper boarder the image, presented across the double page spread or some pages even have a couple images on one.

Tom Wood’s photobook seems to intend to portray a narrative of life in Liverpool. The images in the book aren’t presented in a particular order, there may be a few images that group together so are presented with each other, for example photos from in a nightclub can be found following one another. However, the photographs are shown in such a way that reflects life itself, unpredictable.