Over the years, photographer Tom Wood has amassed a personal archive of more than a million images. Prints, negatives, and contact sheets have “taken over” his whole house, arranged by alphabetised themes. One box is entirely pictures of dogs. Another, labelled “buses”, contains photos of everyday passengers, who become the sharply examined subjects of Wood’s lens. Whole shelves hold landscape photography from Ireland (where Wood was born) and North Wales (where he now lives). And the Chelsea Reach, a legendary Merseyside nightclub open from 1971 to the early 2000s, gets its own dedicated section in the Cs.

The Chelsea Reach is where Wood took many of his most important photographs, capturing the “ordinary” nightlife that existed alongside the flashier images of punks and Blitz Kids in the 70s and 80s. It’s also the subject of his new book, And Love Comes in at the Eye, which collects his photos from club nights at the Chelsea Reach. Young couples kiss, groups of friends dance, and clubbers show off their feathered hair.

And Love Comes in at the Eye is the debut title from the independent imprint Photieman Editions, formed by Wood’s son, Ciarán, to bypass the traditional publishing process. Of course, trawling through a million images is no small feat, and the Chelsea Reach photos are just the beginning. Even they came with some surprises, like the rediscovery of colour prints thought to be lost forever. There’s a special texture to many of the images too, Wood adds, thanks to the process of photographing the work directly from contact sheets.

“It’s like Christmas every day,” he says of the ongoing process of digging back through his photos and assembling them into coherent publications. “Delete, delete, oh, maybe, delete, and then wow. You’re getting all this kind of continual revelation.” On a more sombre note, he adds: “Obviously time is passing. I’m getting old. I’m thinking, how can I get all this stuff out?”

Below, we explore Wood’s career so far, in his own words.

“IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME TO BE A PHOTOGRAPHER”

Wood collected pictures before he took them. Now 75, speaking from his home and studio, he recounts getting off the bus after school as a kid and going into a charity shop, where there were hundreds of photos and postcards on sale. “I’d buy whole albums just for one photo,” he says. “I used to collect the pictures and make collages. My bedroom wall became a collage, even the ceiling.” 

Nevertheless, it simply “never occurred” to him that he could actually be the one behind the camera. “We never even had a camera in the house,” he explains. “We didn’t get electricity in the West of Ireland until 1962. We went to the well for water.” Nevertheless, the impulse was “obviously there”, he notes, and he eventually made his way to art school to study painting. This was followed by a formative stint at a Butlin’s holiday camp in Ayr, where he took “happy snaps” of the holidaymakers.

“IT WAS A DIFFERENT KIND OF EYE CONTACT, DIFFERENT KIND OF UNDERSTANDING”

Wood’s snapshots of life, often among working-class communities, appear tender and empathetic. Their subjects, bathed in summer sun at the English seaside or in the low lights of a party, are wryly observed, but there’s a sense that they’re really living. The photographer himself suggests he’s experienced an almost preternatural sensation when taking photos: “Often I sense people don’t want to be photographed, and so I won’t do it. But other times I feel they’re allowing me to do it, even though they haven’t seen me... I can tell through their eyes.”

He was drawn to the Chelsea Reach after taking on a job as a technician in the fine art department at Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University). “There were nightclubs in Liverpool where everyone was really cool, and looked good, and was easy to photograph,” he says. “The Chelsea was just dead ordinary people, none of whom had a clue why I was doing it... It was a different kind of eye contact, a different kind of understanding.”

Spending many nights at the Chelsea, as well as in the mirrored halls of The Grand, he drew upon his experience with holidaymakers to capture moments of intimacy and slightly awkward self-expression. “It was kind of like Butlin's,” he explains, “in that during the day you photographed families or kids with teddy bears, and then at nighttime you photograph in the clubs where everyone drinks and there’s a lot of smoke. And no one had cameras themselves.” Importantly, no one had phones either, which have become a curse in terms of both eye contact and self-conscious audiences.

“I’M INTERESTED IN GOOD PHOTOGRAPHS. IF IT’S A DOCUMENT, THAT’S A BONUS”

Wood’s work often draws comparisons to the photos of English photographer Martin Parr – and, superficially, it’s easy to see why. The saturated colours and vignettes from 80s Britain resonate, but as Wood himself notes, they come from a very different place. “When I first met Martin Parr, he said, ‘I’m a documentary photographer. If I get a good picture, it’s a bonus,’” Wood explains. “And I said, ‘Martin, I’m interested in good photographs. If it’s a document, it’s a bonus.’” 

In fact, Wood tries “never” to use the word documentary. Instead, he says: “I’m exploring life through the camera, something like a receiver of sensations. Sensations are intangible; you try and organise them through the act of photography. That sounds pretentious, or whatever. But that’s what happens.”

Tom Wood’s And Love Comes in at the Eye is printed in Denmark by Narayana Press, and is now available via Photieman.