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. He has been based there to this day.
During the 1980s he worked extensively for the Sunday Times newspaper. In 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. In the same year his documentation of British Royal Marines in combat during the invasion of Iraq was awarded the Larry Burrows Award for Exceptional Photography by the Eddie Adams Workshop. 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 exhibition of images from the assignment is currently touring Europe's capital cities.
Now established as one of the world’s most respected photojournalists, Stoddart is represented by, and works closely with various elements within Getty Images, to produce campaigning photographic projects on the serious world issues of our time.
Exhibitions:
Sarajevo Retrospective (at Visa Pour l’Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France)
River Blindness (at Alchemy Gallery, London)
Night of British Photography (in Zurich, Switzerland)
Edge of Madness – Sarajevo (at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Also shown at Royal Photographic Society in London, and Oeksnehallen in Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lest We Forget - Africa's AIDS Crisis (at Stavanger Museum, Norway)
iWITNESS (at More London Riverside, London)
Books:
Sarajevo (Motta Press, Italy)
Edge of Madness (Royal Festival Hall, London)
Road to Victory (Bookman)
iWITNESS (Trolley)
