Tom Wood: Men and Women

Thomas "Tom" Wood was born in Ireland on the 14th January 1951 and is a street photographer working in England,  He has had solo shows, and his work has been collected in five books. I visited his exhibition of Men and Women in the Photographers Gallery in Oxford Street.
Tom Wood is apparently never seen without his camera and is constantly moving between different formats and photographic styles, he readily mixes images of strangers with portraits of his own family and friends.

This is his first major solo exhibition in the UK and focuses on previously unseen portraits grouped under the heading of Men and Women. I found it interesting to go and see his work that and some that had not been seen before, his photographs are interesting to me because they are of normal people and many are not staged the captions below the pictures are also a help because otherwise some would not make sense to me and i wouldn't understand the meaning behind why he took that picture and what the focus was, some of the captions made me laugh with one of a group of old women standing in a line in some sort of junkyard/ boot sale and the caption was " Three Wise Women " and it made me smile and without that caption being there i wouldn't have smiled at that particular photograph.

This Photograph of a Ladies toilet attendant taken in 1985 is an odd capture because it just seems to me like a normal thing to see and a normal picture you would find in someones holiday snaps, but for Tom there must have been a meaning to why he had taken this picture, maybe it was the fag in her hand and the slight smirk on her face? Or maybe it was just an interesting impulse snap and 'in the moment'.

I think it is interesting that Tom can take something so normal like many of his pictures are and turn it into something interesting and art worthy, But for me even though these pictures are interesting to view i dont see them as art as such because i think to create art you have to either make something or have a certain meaning to why you have done this or taken the photo and he might well have but i cannot find a meaning from the artist anywhere by reaching on the internet i can only go from the caption underneath the photo "Ladies Toilet Attendant".