Past

Extraordinary Women

Tom Stoddart

Past

Extraordinary Women

Tom Stoddart

Exhibitions

Side Gallery

19 May 2020 - 26 June 2021

Side Gallery is honoured to present Extraordinary Women, an exhibition commemorating the 50-year career of renowned North East-born photojournalist, Tom Stoddart. Throughout his illustrious career, Stoddart travelled the world, producing powerful photo-essays on significant global events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela, the siege of Sarajevo, and the conflicts in Iraq.

The exhibition, accompanied by a book of the same name, brings together both well-known and rarely seen photographs from Stoddart’s extensive archive. Extraordinary Women shines a light on the resilience, courage, and determination of women across the globe, depicting their roles in times of conflict, hardship, and societal change. Through his lens, Stoddart provides a compelling and deeply human perspective on the challenges and triumphs faced by women in the modern world.

When Tom Stoddart applied for a job on his local newspaper, the Berwick Advertiser, in the north east of England he wanted to be a reporter. Fortunately for photography, there was no writing vacancy, only one for a trainee photographer. Tom, who was just 17, took the job and discovered life with a camera was far more exciting that one in an office behind a typewriter. It was the start of an extraordinary career spanning five decades that took him across the world.

In 1978, he moved to London and began working as a freelance in Fleet Street, the then world renowned centre of the British national newspaper industry and spent several years covering stories for the Sunday Times.

His commissions saw him present to record history being made: in 1982 he was in Beirut when Israeli forces bombed Yasser Arafat’s PLO base; that same year also found Tom aboard the Greenpeace ship, the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ in the Gulf of St Laurence in Canada where the environmentalists attempted to stop the Canadians culling baby seals.

In April 1987, Tom and the late Sunday Times foreign correspondent Marie Colvin travelled to war-torn Lebanon in search of the Church of England envoy Terry Waite, who had been kidnapped. They did not find him but bribed a Shia militia commander to allow them into the besieged Palestinian refugee camp at Borj el-Barajneh, where a British doctor Pauline Cutting and her assistant nurse Susan Wighton were running a makeshift hospital. In the 24 hours they were allowed to remain in the camp, Tom shot 20 rolls of film that included a picture that made the front page of the Sunday Times, three pages inside and headlines all over the world leading to the liberation of the camp.

His images from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Romanian Revolution, the moment Nelson Mandela became South African president,Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, Palestine, Sri Lanka and other global hotspots spoke of his courage and the suffering of those in intolerable situations and conditions.

For more information on Tom Stoddart visit: tomstoddart.com