Tom Wood’s 101 Pictures gathers a quarter-century of photographs made among the people of Merseyside. Published by RRB Photobooks in 2020, this 124-page hardcover is presented as a concise retrospective rather than a catalogue of isolated highlights: the selection was made by Martin Parr, while Pádraig Timoney edited and sequenced the book.

That collaborative structure is central to the book’s character. Wood’s work is brought into a sustained editorial rhythm, setting previously unseen photographs alongside major bodies of work, including the nightclub photographs from Looking for Love (1989) and images associated with Photie Man (2005). The result is an account shaped not only by individual encounters, but also by the way photographs accumulate, echo one another, and acquire meaning through sequence.

101 Pictures holds particular importance as the first English-language retrospective of Wood’s work. Its subject is specific—the people and social life of Merseyside—yet the book’s ambition is broader: to reconsider twenty-five years of a photographer’s sustained attention through a carefully authored selection. For collectors, its value lies in this meeting of historical overview and editorial interpretation. It is a substantial point of access to Wood’s practice, while the inclusion of previously unseen images gives the retrospective a dimension beyond simple recapitulation.