Tom Joy
Meet the Aberdeen-born, Leeds-based photographer, Tom Joy, Northern Monk’s first ever Patron.
Robyn Gilmour
Photos:
Tom Joy
Saturday 23 August 2025
This article is from
Patrons Project
issue 121
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Watching Tom Joy take photographs is like watching a bird fly, or a fish swim. He’s shooting our gathering of Patrons, as everyone chats in a bright corner of the pub. I feel a pang of guilt for being the reason he’s working, instead of relaxing into a pint with the rest of them. “Don’t worry,” says Northern Monk’s co-founder and head brewer, Brian Dixon. “Even if we were here on a weekend, Tom would have his camera out.”
Tom was just fifteen when he got his first point and shoot, and was gifted a knock-off version of Photoshop by a friend. “I was fortunate enough to have a computer back then, and would just spend hours in my room playing around with images. That kind of creativity was play for me,” says Tom. He recalls that, around the same time, his highschool art teacher — “one of the ones you remember for all the right reasons” — encouraged him to follow his interest in art into tertiary education. Today Tom is still grateful to have received that support, even if half way through a course in graphic design, his love of photography overtook his original choice in career. He saw his degree through to conclusion, and a week after graduation, moved from Aberdeen to Leeds on a whim.
There, he started shooting club nights and heavy metal gigs, both scenes that he loved but which he also knew he didn’t want to shoot forever. In the background of whatever paid work he could get, Tom started building up a portfolio of personal projects, the first of which he called ‘Places and Spaces’. The collection encompassed everything from food photography to interiors, mostly within independent venues around Leeds that he simply liked the look of. In hindsight, and with some professional success under his belt, he finds it bizarre to reflect on this time. “I really was just rocking up, putting myself in front of people, and trying to convince them I had hopes of doing something interesting,” says Tom.
Tom Joy
It was around this time that Tom crossed paths with Northern Monk. After being introduced to co-founder Russ Bisset by a client, the pair immediately hit it off. Their shared approach to collaboration laid the groundwork for a now-ten-year professional relationship, and the friendship that comes with that. Tom was Northern Monk’s first ever Patrons Projects recipient, having been a significant creative collaborator while the concept of the series was coming together.
“[Russ and I] had been talking about using beer as an exhibition space for artists, for athletes, for people who are part of the north,” Tom begins. “A couple months later, he emailed me and was like, ‘can I get your three favourite photos of all time?’ So, after some thought, I pulled together three images that were very close to my heart and sent them over. I didn’t hear anything back for a minute, and then I think he just sent back the can mock-up, and that was it.”
Connecting with Northern Monk was just one outcome of Tom’s Places and Spaces project, but perhaps more consequential to this time, was his development of a core philosophy: “shoot the portfolio you want to be known for”. This led him to the sporting world. Connecting with athletes felt like a homecoming for Tom, who — with a background in athletics himself — found that a common language allowed him to engage with his subjects on a much deeper level.
British skeleton sled racer, Tabitha Stoecker
“I like to say that with my background, I have an informed opinion on movement,” he says. “So, if I’m working on the track, I’m not just asking for a high knee. I know how to communicate in a way that will allow us to really push the shot.” Such soft skills, in combination with his keen abilities as a photographer, and driving philosophy, would bag Tom work with brands like Adidas, Gymshark, Puma, Reebok and England Rugby in the years that followed.
The project he’s perhaps most proud of, though, was a self-initiated shoot with British skeleton sled racer, Tabitha Stoecker, earlier this year. “I grew up skiing in Scotland and yet I had no snow sports in my portfolio,” says Tom, explaining why he went looking for an athlete in the field. Upon connecting with Tabitha, he found her story so compelling, he went out on a limb and asked if he could join her for a training camp in Austria, and shoot a couple of sessions.
“I was very conscious that she’s a world class athlete, and so I didn’t want to interfere with her training period, or cause injury by getting in the way or being a distraction,” says Tom. “Tabitha was just so fantastic and accommodating and just generally really smart about the whole thing, though. She’d thought of everything before I could even ask and she got the whole team to be excited about it as well, which was really great.”
In the end, going out on a limb, and self-funding the shoot paid off. Tabitha’s story, as told through Tom’s photos, was picked up by Athleta magazine, a publication Tom says he’d been chasing for years, and really admired. Tabitha will be competing for team GB in the 2026 Winter Olympics. Make sure you check out and follow her story in the runup.
Read Tabitha's story here.
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