Photieman

Photieman, an exhibition of Tom Wood's photographs at the
Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
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by R. Eric Swanepoel

As founding member of "If the Alcohol's Free, We'll be There" I was
there, at the opening of this exhibition. Free booze compensates for
poor art, I have found. I am willing to suffer clich?d mediocrity for
the sake of a toll-free libation or two. So it was with my usual
cynicism that I traversed the Castlefield's portals, grabbed a glass of
wine, and beheld the offerings.

Within a few seconds my scepticism was shredded. I am not one for
reading up on exhibitions beforehand, preferring to let the work speak
for itself. This did, volubly and eloquently. I guessed immediately
that this was Liverpool, before I'd seen any pictures containing
recognisable landmarks. It was the people that were so obviously
Liverpudlian. Arguably Liverpool has the strongest identity of anywhere
in the British Isles. There is a Scouse attitude that is harder for a
prose writer to put into words than for a skilled poet or photographer
to capture, and coincidentally I had recently been perusing the verse
of a Liverpudlian poet and friend of mine who is penning a collection
in honour of his father's life and times. His poems are as steeped in
the vitality and edgy humour of Liverpool as are Tom Wood's
photographs, and the link was immediately made. You can tell by the
prematurely ageing faces that these people have tough lives, yet the
jaunty body language - the attitude - speaks of a refusal to lie down,
a zest for life that finds humour in the least of things, and insists
on having the last pithy word.

This exhibition may be viewed in several ways: as a document of
fashions over the years (the heavy mid-thigh coats and lumpen hats of
the trio of 70s old ladies ludicrously processioning along a park path,
the blue mascara and desperate bouffant hair of the four 80s girls
staring out of the past into your 21st century eyes, the skimpy
athletic vest teemed with skimpier hotpants and teetering heels of a
90s lass staggering home from the pub); as a collection of faces (the
feral-faced urchin sulking on a doorstep, the teenage skinhead at a
fairground venting his spleen at the photographer, the haunting,
beautiful and intelligent face of the young mother in a cape, her twin
offspring playing a face-hiding game in the capacious pram behind which
she stands - what would she have become in another life?); and as a
display of photographic formats and techniques (hastily snapped and
grainy black-and-white images, high quality colour shots, and a
splendid high-definition panoramic shot of men leaving a football
match, one assumes, every detail of their dress and body language
exquisitely rendered).

Of special note are the photographs shot through bus windows. These
cleverly meld the reflected exterior world with the preoccupied or
curious faces of the passengers. Pub interiors are another
stock-in-trade of this wonderful photographer. How does he manage to
capture so many intimate moments of love reciprocated and thwarted,
without having his camera or face smashed? The genius of Tom Wood is
that one never feels like a voyeur. He (and, by extension, we the
viewers) have too much sympathy for the subjects. We recognise our own
humanity in their humanity, only here it's possibly more honest and
unashamed? Perhaps that's what makes Liverpool great. Go see
this!

Oh... the wine was fine too!