Building Tom Stoddart’s New Website www.tomstoddart.com
With the success of the “Extraordinary Women” book and exhibition behind him Tom Stoddart approached us to collaborate again in 2021; this time it was to update and give fresh eyes to his work with a brand new website.
Top of Tom's list were specific design elements and the freedom over the final edit alongside his wife Ailsa Stoddart. It quickly became apparent we were not only building powerful picture galleries but also a site that would satisfy our longer term commitment to Tom’s legacy. He instructed us to take our time. To not rush the opportunity of creating a working website fit for his legacy that will stay current as we now move forwards with a world without Tom. His images will remain upfront and still very relevant.
In the early planning stages it became clear that we had to build powerful and carefully edited picture galleries. In our view our challenge was not just to create the best site we could with plenty of content to start of with but also to keep lovers of his work coming back for updated news and refreshing galleries to give visibility to Tom’s archive of images spanning 50 years. In hindsight it is a real blessing that Tom got to view the first draft of the website; crucial in-fact as Tom passed away before the work was completed.
We spent close to seven months developing ideas, listening to all of Tom’s podcasts, interviews and scouring the internet for content. Caroline has worked for Tom close to 20+ years but still found so much to discover and felt it was important to include Tom’s words as much as possible (videos are included of Tom in conversation) so that you really do get to feel and learn what photography meant to Tom and how much he loved the industry. We chatted for hours with Tom’s friends and family all the while doing the vital important fact checking. We reached out to his peers, photojournalists, fixers, Picture Editors and incredible writers, who were in the field with him over his 50 year career. They provided captivating first hand stories of what life was like in some of the war torn areas they would have found themselves working in and what it was like to have Tom with you. The responses were just brilliant and many are incorporated into the essays on the site.
We have been incredibly fortunate to have collaborators under our editorship; David Williams provided great friendship to us and was a guiding hand with all the text editing across the website, for which we are truly grateful. Kim Willsher updated and made accurate Tom’s biography which is so vital it's accurate. Joanne Lowe was on hand with vital design tips.
This website would be nothing without Tom’s outstanding photography. We are honoured to have been tasked as part of the team of guardians for Tom Stoddart’s work and we hope to have begun that journey with producing a website that brings his fans and picture editors back time and again to look at the work and that it will aid researchers and students to further their learning of who Tom was; his approach to photojournalism and being an exemplary humanitarian.
