Tom Wood in Mougins, portrait of an eternal Saturday on Earth

If Ray Davies, leader of the Kinks, is undoubtedly the most witty and insightful chronicler of British society in the sixties, Tom Wood, whom we fully discover thanks to the exhibition dedicated to him by the Center de la Photographie de Mougins, today appears as the most brilliant portrait painter of Merseyside of the 80s and 90s, a region in the throes of the economic crisis. economic. An artist whose work draws between humor and empathy the material of fortunately unearthed photographic treasures. It was time.

It’s Saturday every day

In the poster, 17-year-old Rachel is captured in her twilight teenage years in a sparkly dress that cheekily matches her lips. Attached to the photo, the title of the exhibition, perhaps a reference to Morrissey. Although it is to Allan Sillitoe’s prolific masterpiece that this Everyday is Saturday. Witness, the mural that welcomes visitors to the exhibition, superimpositions of raw portraits, party people to capillary extravaganzas eighties and held to match, randomly surprised at rowdy parties, which the series documents Looking for Love, shot on the fly by Tom Wood at Chelsea Reach club, New Brighton. A wall of fame suburban replaying the wild collages that cover the streets with concert posters. Except that here, the heroes of a night are the anonymous. Photie Man aka TW fixed them forever on his film, by chance and in a single flash. Neither voyeur nor ironic, just one of them. Moreover, he always ensured – he still does today – to offer a print of his photo to anyone caught in his flash. Nobility obliges.

©Tom Wood Chelsea Reach Series – Looking for Love, 1984. Dye coupler print, 38 x 56 cm

Saturday, definitely blessed day for the Tom Wood of the time (1978-1999). Before immersing himself in the night owl crowd until the end of the night, on the lookout for the Image, he goes early in the morning to the Great Homer Street Market, a distance from the city center of Liverpool. With his Leica loaded with often outdated films, he paces the stalls of the market around which crowds a lively crowd of women, come to snatch the good deal of the week. Portrait, once again, of a social ritual where mothers, daughters and sisters are confused by the few years that separate them, negotiations and confidences are exchanged in an atmosphere where color, omnipresent, softens the economic distress palpable everywhere. Color, another choice of Tom Wood, eager not to sacrifice treacherous aesthetic artifacts to this painting of his time.

Abstract painter, passionate about experimental cinema

We rewind. Tom Wood was born in 1951 somewhere in County Mayo, Ireland. From a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. Union which obliges the family to settle in England. From 1973 to 1976, Tom Wood studied painting at Leicester Polytechnic. He practices abstraction. He is also fond of experimental cinema. He then frequents with assiduity the small second-hand shops where one hunts down, in piles and for a few pennies, paper prints of photos found. His preference goes to unknown portraits. Little by little, he built up a modest collection (a word that stuck to the skin of this discreet genius) but which nevertheless sharpened his acuity and certainly his incredible sense of composition. Equally modest are his first photo orders. happy snaps, portraits made by the kilometer, framed to erect an evening at the restaurant into an altar of imperishable happiness for all. Presented in the exhibition, they have the immaculate charm of prints faded by time. It prevents. For any commercial whatever the format, a real humanity crosses this carousel of imposed figures.

A human construction

©Tom Wood, ‘ntlemen [Cowley, Oxford]. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters series, 1973. Silver print, selenium toning, 27.5 x 27.5 cm

The human being is what Tom Wood tirelessly seeks, far from stereotypes, at the heart of each of his images, which he offers himself with a child’s greediness like inexhaustible surprises to himself. Street photographer, he instinctively triggers and seems surprised at the revelation of the captured image. The first, masterful. A fisherman lying on a wooden pontoon, oblong fish carefully lined up to his left in a series of undulating shapes to which reflect, in a miraculous composition, the reflections on the water. Later, young girls sipping Pepsi-Cola waiting for their boyfriends in front of the men’s toilets, the Gentlemen signage deprived of its first two letters, like a subliminal message addressed to the two girls it does its hair. Not far away, a pair of signed pin-ups Not Miss New Brightonencamped Spirit of Ecstasy on the hood of an improbable sports coupe, disappointed at not having been able to win the Grail, but determined to dart the last fires of ordinary seduction.

Back to Cammell Laird

©Tom Wood Mad Max Cammell Laird Shipyard series, 1993. Dye coupler print, 65 x 43.5 cm

The most astonishing series is probably the result of the commission that the DPA, the Archives of British Documentary Photography, entrusted to Tom Wood and which he produced from 1993 to 1996 at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead. A flagship of British industry, the pride of Merseyside, the largest shipyard in Europe, the site did not resist the policy of the Thatcher government, which dismantled it in just a few years. There is no longer any question of seizing the living, it is necessary to reconstruct its trace. Tom Wood carries out a meticulous work of memory, using ingenious processes, experimenting with techniques and exposure times that will allow him to find, in the decay of offices, cabins and decrepit industrial spaces, the trajectory of the workers who built the glory. . Without departing from a humor that is always on edge, as illustrated by the fabulous madmaxa welder whose exhausted work clothes seem to spring by mimicry from the rusty steel tank in front of which he poses, draped in his surly dignity, half-steampunk, half-caveman.

The Reds, Liverpool

And football in all this? Without which this sensitive portrait of Liverpool and Merseyside would obviously not be complete. In the streets lined by cohorts of supporters, erratic silhouettes in black and white alternate with groups of kids in multicolored sportswear. On the side of Anfield, we certainly never walk alone but in a kind of permanent movement. A ceremonial procession, fixed on film in a succession of again perfect compositions, masterfully produced by a photographer for whom the real spectacle cannot be located within the stadium but rather among these gang o’ lads. Concentrated and united, without the slightest apparent belligerent intention, ready to carry high the common object of their liverpudlian pride.

The artist finally revealed

A shadow remains, however: why did Tom Wood miss out on the celebrity that Martin Parr knows? In the mid-1980s, the two photographers were invited to exhibit their work together. For technical reasons, Tom Wood’s prints are not ready on time. His sidekick therefore exhibits his photographic series solo, produced like him near New Brighton. The exhibition proved to be a huge success and propelled Martin Parr, his now legendary series The Last Resort, symbolizing in itself the revival of English documentary photography. Later, the unfortunate Tom Wood will have more bad luck and will experience a few other bad twists of fate. The artist confides with a smile that his own brother, younger than him and versed in finance, considered him a loser for a long time. Before watching, dumbfounded, a British television documentary, presenting his eldest to millions of viewers as a true genius of photography. Brotherly admiration restored, it’s up to you to discover now – by giving thanks to the Center Photographique de Mougins, its director, Yasmine Chemali, and the two curators of the exhibition François Cheval and Jérôme Sother – the modest and brilliant Photie Man, eternal sparkling eye of 71 spring. A Saturday or any other day of the week works just as well.

Tom Wood, Every day is Saturday
The exhibition, co-produced with Le Center d’Art GwinZegal, Guingamp, is part of the program of the Rencontres d’Arles as part of the Grand Arles Express.
Mougins Photography Center
43, rue de l’Eglise, 04 22 21 52 12
Until September 16, 2022
11 a.m. – 8 p.m., closed on Tuesday, late opening on Thursday until 10 p.m.
Information and parallel programming on cpmougins.com

By Luc Clement