Tom Stoddart

Photographer

Tom Stoddart began his photographic career with a provincial newspaper in his native North East of England. In 1978 he moved to London and, working freelance, started to regularly supply national newspapers and magazines. During the eighties he worked extensively for The Sunday Times newspaper.

During 1982 he was in Beirut when the Israeli forces bombed Yasser Arafat’s besieged PLO base. Later, Tom was aboard the Greenpeace boat ‘Rainbow Warrior’ where he shot a widely published story about the environmentalists efforts to stop the Canadian cull of baby Seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence. In 1987, he was back in Beirut shooting a world exclusive on the horrific conditions inside the Palestinian camp of Borj el Barajneh, where Dr. Pauline Cutting was trapped. He also witnessed international events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Romanian Revolution and the massing of alliance troops in the Middle East for the Desert Storm conflict with Iraq. In July 1991, Tom travelled to Sarajevo to document the civil war that was engulfing Yugoslavia. The work from Sarajevo was published across the world. Returning a year later for The Sunday Times Magazine, Tom was seriously injured in heavy fighting around the Bosnian Parliament buildings. After a year of recovery, Tom threw himself back into photojournalism, producing a powerful feature on the aftermath of the Mississippi floods and, later that year, an award-wining photo-essay on the harsh regime for the training of Chinese Olympic Child Gymnasts. In December 1993 Stoddart returned to Sarajevo to report on the hardship of life in the city during a freezing winter under siege. This trip confirmed Tom’s fascination with a city that he was to return to on a dozen different occasions up until the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. In 1997 Tony Blair gave Stoddart exclusive access for 3 months to document his election campaign as Labour swept to victory after 18 years of Conservative government.

Stoddart’s in-depth work on the terrible HIV/AIDS pandemic blighting sub-Saharan Africa has been exhibited and published extensively and won the POY World Understanding Award in 2003. His retrospective outdoor exhibition, iWITNESS, was visited by 250,000 people and the accompanying book was honoured as the best photography book published in 2004 by the POY judging panel. During 2008 he was commissioned by COPA/COGECA in Brussels to document agriculture throughout all 27 countries of the European Union. The resulting images from the assignment toured Europe’s capital cities. His second major retrospective, Perspectives, was displayed near London’s Tower Bridge during the 2012 Olympic Games and was viewed by 225,000 visitors from all over the world. Over the years Tom has worked closely with charities and NGO’s such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam, Christian Aid, Sightsavers and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Now established as one of the world’s most respected photojournalists, Stoddart is represented by, and works closely with Getty Images, to produce campaigning photographic projects on the serious world issues of our time.

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