Tom Sharp is a photographic artist from Ottawa, Canada.

Tom gravitates towards black and white film photography as his primary medium. His work often expresses aspects of the subject through the materials used to create the image. His time at Bath Spa University has been one of increasing experimentation across different developing and printing approaches.

Steeped in modernism through art and architecture from a young age, Tom uses photography to express this upbringing through elegant composition and an acute eye for detail; through forms that serve the subjects of his images. Inspired by the work of Barbara Morgan, Harold Edgerton and Norman McLaren, Tom has developed a dance photography practice that renders movement visible and abstracts the physical form of dancers. These images become a form of notation interpretable to practitioners of a given form.

The present images of dancer Lucy Hopkins capture her incorporation of Butoh into a contemporary dance practice. Shot in studio and on the grounds of Sion Hill, it reflects Butoh’s origin as a Japanese art informed by western contemporary traditions. Butoh is often concerned with transformation, the expression of uncomfortable feelings, and the concept of the empty body. The exterior images were captured on infrared film originally used by US forces in the Pacific theatre of World War II, and through lenses derived from Japanese military technology. Thus, materially, these images echo back to the terrible conflict that led to the occupation and westernization of Japan, pivotal factors in the creation of Butoh.