I could never pick a favourite shot, or a best one. This is actually a photograph that almost didn’t make it into my current exhibition, but I was looking at it while I was preparing for the opening and asked a few visitors what they thought. One of them, an elderly lady, said: “Is it a greeting, or is it parting?” The more she looked at the picture the more she thought it didn’t show some casual separation – someone going away for the weekend – it seemed to be more than that. Another woman said: “It’s ageless love, basically, isn’t it? Ageless love is what’s there.” I wondered myself if the two couples were part of the same family, and if it was the women who were going away; they’re the ones with the bags. There’s a lot of ambiguity.
I have a camera with me all the time. When I made this picture, in around 2017, I’d been teaching in Colwyn Bay and was at the train station on my way home. It was evening, and the camera was in my hand as I waited on the platform. As the train came in, rather than just jumping on, I was still paying attention to what was happening nearby. I wandered around and took a few pictures, trying to be invisible, and then carried on once I was on board, photographing landscapes out the window.
When I first attempted candid work, I’d try to be as fast as I could and avoid being noticed, but 99 times out of 100 I’d fail. You get one bad look and the whole picture’s spoiled. I used to be really good at table tennis when I was young, which involves always being on the move, going this way and that – it’s very physical and fast. I started using a similar technique with my candid photography. You can’t do it methodically, it’s almost like a dance; and when you’re really in the flow, you kind of forget what you’re doing, you’re almost floating. Later, you look at what you’ve done and maybe that magic picture is there – it’s always a surprise. If I could pre-visualise the image, it would be pointless doing it. It’s the fact it’s a surprise that’s important.
There are other details that I like, such as the fact the woman in the foreground has gone up on her tiptoes for the kiss, and the way the man’s fingers are pressing into her sides, and hers are pressing into his cheeks. Then there’s the woman with the banana who’s creeping into the left of the frame. She looks as if she’s in her own little world, having a private laugh about something. And I like the repeating colours, the yellow and turquoise and red.
The photo is from a series called Snatch Out of Time. I got that phrase from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem The Hospital, which he wrote having undergone treatment at St James’s Hospital in Dublin. It’s such a positive poem, nevertheless – in the last two lines, he says: “For we must record love’s mystery without claptrap, / Snatch out of time the passionate transitory.” What’s more photographic than that? Because you’re not just trying to capture a moment when you take a photograph, you’ve got to feel it as well. It’s got to be something meaningful to you, something that’s passionate and part of you. And yet we know we’ve got to do it just like that, because life is transitory.
Because it was taken in Wales, I gave this picture a Welsh title: “Ta-ta rŵan” – Goodbye, now. Sometimes the title can seem part of the picture. My wife’s friend, who died recently, came up with some great titles for my photographs. There’s a portrait in the show which might have made for a more obvious best shot, showing a man and woman standing against a car with their son inside, looking out. She called it Their Pride and Joy. The title could have referred to the boy, the car or even the woman’s breasts – she’s quite buxom. I’m told that lady has also died, but she lives on in the picture. I look at all these people and still feel I’m in their debt.
Tom Wood’s CV
Born: County Mayo, Ireland, 1951.
Studied: Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic, 1973-76.
Influences: A film studies course at Leicester Poly covered mainstream, European art and avant garde cinema as well as extensive viewing of experimental film, with different films arriving each week from the London Film-makers’ Co-op (now Lux).
High point: “The current 50-year retrospective at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, returning my photographic work to the people of Merseyside.”
Low point: “Twice being shortlisted but missing out on major awards (Paul Hamlyn award and the Arts Foundation Fellowship), which would have enabled me to return to Ireland and photograph there full-time for three years.”
Top tip: “Carry your camera always, make pictures casually and for fun, whatever the subject. For me the subject is where I happen to be, in a field of cattle in the evening, looking out of a train window, my friend Roger’s 70th birthday get-together, a grandchild, the local agricultural show. It’s a great way to get out of yourself!”
• Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood is at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool until 7 January
