Tom Stoddart

Tom Stoddart is one of the UK’s best-known documentary photographers, and knows just what it’s like to take photographs in hell...

One of our most distinguished documentary photographers

Who were the biggest influences on you when you were starting out? What appealed to me about being a photojournalist was being able to tell stories through my images, rather than just illustrating somebody else’s stories as a newspaper photographer. So it was very exciting to work on The Sunday Times Magazine when Don McCullin was still working for it. Don has always been a big influence, and is now a friend.

I also greatly admired the work of Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith. Salgado was another big influence on me, as he helped give us the confidence to go and shoot black and white again...

When did you first come under fire?

It was in 1982, and again, there is a Don McCullin connection. I had gone to Beirut for a newspaper, and the Israeli army was bombarding the PLO. I was pretty raw and innocent. I happened to meet Don in a bar, we got chatting, and he kindly suggested I go out with him the next day for a walk around.

During our walk, an Israeli suction bomb landed in the street and there was a huge explosion. Don taught me how to handle this kind of situation, and how to conduct myself.

Beirut had a big impact on me. After that, I found it hard going back to being a press photographer and doing celebrity photo calls.

You got very badly injured covering the siege of Sarajevo, right?

Yes. I’d never been badly hurt before. I just made a mistake. I went across some open ground near the parliament building and got thrown over a wall by an exploding shell. I landed badly and needed several operations.