Tom Stoddart was born in Morpeth Northumberland in the North East of England. He began his photography career working for a local provincial Newspaper, before he moved to London in 1978, where working as a freelancer started to regularly supply national newspapers and magazines. Since then he has gone on to become one of the Worlds most respected Photojournalists, covering the war in Lebanon, the famine in Sudan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tony Blair’s election campaign that saw him end 18 years of Conservative Government and many other events, that have seen him win several photography awards.
I found this vimeo clip of Tom on one of the OCA facebook groups and was instantly drawn in to his work. The quality of the images from the tones and sharpness to the composition in what must have been often very difficult and harrowing circumstances. During the interview he raises the point of still images still having a strong purpose in photojournalism, with the example of the torture of the Guantanamo bay inmates and how still images can still cause change in the world, which has become more and more reliant on video to tell stories. The image inside the hut in famine torn Africa stands out for me, with the capture of birth, life and death in a single frame. It was also interesting to see him talk about the young child noticing the boot prints in the image, which were obviously not from the inhabitants, but from the photographer himself, this raising questions in the light of recent scandals involving Steve McCurry and image alterations, does it degenerate from the impact of the image to have those bootprints there. I think that the subject itself more than stands out above anything else and shows in the fact it took a child to notice rather than the photographer and countless others that had witnessed the image and the power of the situation being depicted.
RobCox 