For many months we asked photographers to send us a piece of audio no longer than five minutes in length to include on our A Photographic Life podcast. These became a book which is now out of print but remain in audio form within the podcast archive, available wherever you get your podcasts . However, we are responding to listener requests and offering transcriptions of some of our favourite contributions. Enjoy!
Tom Stoddart began his photographic career on a local newspaper in his native North-East of England. In 1978, he moved to London and began working freelance for publications such as The Sunday Times. During a long and varied career he has witnessed such international events as the war in Lebanon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela, the bloody siege of Sarajevo, and the wars against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Over the years, Stoddart has worked with charities and NGO’s such as Oxfam, Christian Aid, and Sightsavers. His extensive work on the AIDS pandemic blighting Africa has been widely published and exhibited. In 2012, his Perspectives retrospective outdoor exhibition was displayed at London’s South Bank. His book Extraordinary Women was published in 2020. Stoddart died in 2021 aged 68.
“Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart, it’s a way of life.” It’s been my way of life for almost fifty years. In November 1970, aged seventeen, I walked through the doors of the Berwick Advertiser in Northumberland to begin work as a trainee photographer earning six pounds per week. My parents were poor and we didn’t have a camera so, as a child, I had never been exposed to photography until, one day, the Daily Mirror sent a reporter and photographer to the small fishing village where we lived
to do a feature on the demise of the fishing industry. The photographer posed a group of fishermen and their young sons at the harbour to illustrate the point of the story. A couple of weeks later one of the boys in the picture showed me prints that the photographer had sent by way of thanks to everyone in the group. I was stunned; the black and white photographs were 16×12 and I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my young life.
I enjoyed every minute on the Advertiser and learned how important the hatches, matches and dispatches coverage of a local newspaper is to the community. One day ‘Lady Luck’ smiled on me again when the Queen Mother made a royal visit to Berwick and I was sent to the town hall to photograph her signing the visitor’s book. As I nervously stepped forward to take the picture, I didn’t notice that the flash sync lead had dropped out of my ancient Yashica Mat.Click! Nothing. Panicking I struggled to reconnect the lead. Noticing my predicament, Her Majesty said, “Take your time, young man.” My next and only frame shows the Queen Mum beaming out at this hapless photographer. The image was seen by a picture agency boss who gave me a job shooting for the national papers. I was on my way to Fleet Street.
Photography is everything to me, it has transported me from that small North East village and given me a ringside view of some of the most historic events of our times and form incredible relationships. I’ve photographed amazing people doing both unspeakably bad and wonderfully good things to each other. In 1992, I was badly injured in shelling in Sarajevo and spent three days lying on a stretcher in a dark hospital corridor with others who were wounded waiting for electricity so we could be x-rayed or scanned. When the power came on, the other wounded people insisted I went to the front of the queue. Alongside the horror, conflict and needless killing you see great acts of humanity, love and respect. It is a privilege to have a photographer’s way of life.”
© Grant Scott 2026
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