Tom Wood Interview (Issue Magazine) (link)
Photo by Tom Wood
The biggest fear is to be a flash in the pan. To get tired, or bored, or feel like photography isn’t really an important thing, or not important enough.
There is so much peace and permanence in hearing Tom Wood speak on his long monastic efforts at seeing. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been easy for him. Time is never easy, things happen, you lose jobs, it’s hard to find money, something breaks, you get sick and can’t produce.
To persevere is an old fashioned desire, but there is a natural truth to it. To be lost not only in the moment but in the decades. To have worked, and produced, and built for decades. What a wondrous thing. How deserving of respect. My youthful (am I so young anymore?) instincts, my ambition has a lot to learn.
JWD: And you’re still going around shooting just as much?
TW: Yeah, but less so in Liverpool, after 25 years of doing the same kind of routine day after day, I’ve exhausted it. I can’t do it anymore. But I travel to Ireland, to photograph the landscape. I’d been coming out to Wales on day trips on the train and I’d bring my bike and I’d photograph. I moved to Wales to be in the middle of the landscape, but I’ll continue to photograph in Liverpool—it’s only 40 minutes away.
JWD: And when you travel do you take pictures too?
TW: Yeah. I don’t travel a lot, but I take pictures from the train window and the car.
JWD: When you went to Germany for your show, did you photograph the people there too?
TW: It doesn’t work as well. Different kind of people, different feel, different everything. I’ve rarely got a good picture wandering around a foreign town. More likely a good one when I’m traveling, in a station, or from the train window, or in the hotel. When I’m in Ireland I relate to it very strongly, I can just shoot like mad. I took some photographs when I was in New York but couldn’t get beyond the Gary Winogrand backgrounds everywhere.
…
So, no question about that. Photography doesn’t wear out. It’s just as interesting to me now to look at a bunch of pictures as it was then. It’s the same as music. You can play the same piece too much maybe and come back to it a couple years later and see why it was great. And a good picture you should be able to look at a lot of times without wearing it out.
That’s what you’re aiming for.
As an aside. Looking at the photos, you can see why Martin Parr likes him. But Parr is mistaken if he thinks that they are motivated similarly, Wood isn’t making fun.
Click the link in the title.
Posted 2 years ago
