Tom Wood: Photie Man

by Tom Wood (Photographer), Manfred Heiting (Editor)

For 25 years, Tom Wood lived in New Brighton, just across the river Mersey from Liverpool. He became known locally as "photieman" because everyday he was out on the streets with his camera. Most of the pictures collected in this book were taken within a five-minute walk from Wood's home. The work focuses on the inhabitants of the town and its regular visitors, from Liverpool daytrippers to clubbers who attended the Chelsea Reach nightspot. Roberta Smith from "The New York Times" writes that "Each of his images seems to diagram a specific emotional exchange [and] are surprisingly individual in their composition and nuance. Neither ironic nor intrusive, they provide a poignant sense of the carefully disguised insecurity and age old rituals of youth." Wood presents over 170 dazzling color and tritone photographs of cocky youths, friends, lovers, fathers, mothers and babies that provide insight into the area, its inhabitants and the rites of passage inherent in growing up.

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2005

About the author

Tom Wood graduated from Middle Tennessee State University on a Saturday then started full-time the following Monday at The Tennessean, where he spent the next 36 years as a sports writer and copy editor.

Tom covered area colleges, boxing, the Iroquois Steeplechase, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and other events. He still freelances mainly for the Ledger newspapers in Nashville and Knoxville and Chattanooga (Hamilton County Herald) but has also written for the Saltillo (MS) Daily Journal, Knoxville News Sentinel, Country Family News, the Naples News, and Ft. Myers News-Press, and other publications.

The short story "A Night on the Town" (2020) co-written with Michael J. Tucker is available as an ebook, and also has been turned into a full-length screenplay. Two of Tom's stories have been semifinalists in the Nashville Film Festival, Vendetta Stone (2015) and Death Takes a Holliday (2016). Tom's other short stories have appeared in the anthologies Writers Crushing Covid-19 (2020), Words on Water (2019), Tennesseans West Vol. 1 (2015), Weird Western Yarns Vol. 1, Western Tales! Vol. 3 and Filtered Through Time (2014).

Tom has worked as an extra on the ABC series "Nashville" (2012-2018) as well as "The Identical" movie (2014), a music video, and other multi-media projects.