Irish born photographer Tom Wood (b.1951) has taken photographs almost every day for the last 40 years, documenting people in their everyday environments; on the bus, at the shops, in pubs, work spaces and nightclubs. Never seen without his camera, and constantly moving between different formats and photographic styles, colour and black and white, the Photie Man (as Wood became known locally) mixes images of strangers with portraits of family and friends.

Men and Women presents Wood's most recent arrangement of his highly acclaimed works. Wood, in a creative collaboration with artist Padraig Timoney, has re-visited his vast archive of images. Editing from previously unseen bodies of work along with the seminal Looking for Love, All Zones Off Peak, Football Grounds, Shipyard and Docks and Women’s Market, his photographs were organised under the headings 'Men' and 'Women'. What began to emerge was a subtle new reading of his work that dealt with gender alongside his other preoccupations with character and place. Displayed together without chronology, the fluid arrangement highlights the intentional visual play between the images, as well as Wood's prolonged involvement with his subject matter.

Men and Women was first shown at The Photographers' Gallery, London in 2012 in an exhibition organised in collaboration with the National Media Museum, Bradford. The works were included in their recent major retrospective of Wood’s Tom Wood: Photographs 1973-2013. The exhibition on show here is a new presentation of Men and Women organised in collaboration with Gallery of Photography, Dublin where it will be on show from 21 November 2013 – 12 January 2014.

Tom Wood was born in Mayo, West Ireland in 1951. He grew up in Cowley, Oxford and studied painting at Leicester Polytechnic. In 1978 he moved to Merseyside where he taught photography part-time while working on his photographic projects.

Various series by Wood have appeared in book form, including ‘Photie Man’ (Steidl, 2005), 'People' (Wienand, 1999), 'Bus-Odyssey' (Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001), 'All Zones off Peak' (Dewi Lewis Publishing, Stockport, 1998) and 'Looking for Love' (Cornerhouse Manchester /Aperture, NY, 1989).

Major exhibitions of his work have been held in galleries and museums internationally including International Centre of Photography, New York, FOAM Gallery, Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford; 2003, C/O, Berlin, Germany 2012, Photographers' Gallery, London, 2012. His work has also been exhibited in MOMA, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, The National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

This exhibition was organised in collaboration between Gallery of Photography, Dublin and Belfast Exposed and is supported by Arts Council Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.