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Irish Work
Irish Work by Tom Wood is a highly personal book of unseen photographs taken over a period of over nearly 50 years. The book contains over 200 previously unpublished images centring on Wood’s lifelong relationship with Ireland - a personal story and conflict, linked to the wider history of the country.
Tom Wood was born in 1951 to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, who were later forced to emigrate to England. He would return home to Ireland annually, photographing against the backdrop of Nephin mountain. In 1978 he moved to Merseyside and spent the next 25 years there creating many of his best-known pictures, primarily street photographs. Throughout this period, he was also working on a long-term study of the west of Ireland, and the wider landscape of his birthplace and childhood. Family connections are woven throughout the book but never explained. The people and places intertwined throughout the images are dense with history, both public and personal.
Taken between 1972 and 2019, the photographs are neither chronological nor follow a defined narrative—instead they are presented as a stream of consciousness. The book shifts stylistically from portrait to panorama, video to colour and black & white, and in subject matter from landscape to interior, lone figures to social gatherings, with a gentle humour coolly observational, anecdotal, and playful.
The pictures suggest a fullness; a concurrence and layering of multiple events, and edge-to- edge richness of life. Irish Work showcases Wood’s artistic shifts of style over five decades, while preserving both his individuality and mastery of the photographic form.
Tom Wood was born in 1951 to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, who were later forced to emigrate to England. He would return home to Ireland annually, photographing against the backdrop of Nephin mountain. In 1978 he moved to Merseyside and spent the next 25 years there creating many of his best-known pictures, primarily street photographs. Throughout this period, he was also working on a long-term study of the west of Ireland, and the wider landscape of his birthplace and childhood. Family connections are woven throughout the book but never explained. The people and places intertwined throughout the images are dense with history, both public and personal.
Taken between 1972 and 2019, the photographs are neither chronological nor follow a defined narrative—instead they are presented as a stream of consciousness. The book shifts stylistically from portrait to panorama, video to colour and black & white, and in subject matter from landscape to interior, lone figures to social gatherings, with a gentle humour coolly observational, anecdotal, and playful.
The pictures suggest a fullness; a concurrence and layering of multiple events, and edge-to- edge richness of life. Irish Work showcases Wood’s artistic shifts of style over five decades, while preserving both his individuality and mastery of the photographic form.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2021
3 people want to read
About the author
Tom Wood
83 books25 followersTom 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 16, 2021
A nice volume. There's a stream of consciousness to the images which vary from the insightful to personal to the photographer. A sense of change and time passing comes across. There's also an element of pilgrimage to some of these.
Displaying 1 of 1 review