Stephen McCoy

Stephen McCoy (born in Kensington in 1956) studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic and is a leading figure in social documentary and conceptual authorial photography from the Merseyside region. Throughout his career, spanning more than four decades, he has explored in depth the ways in which people inhabit and shape their private and public spaces. His historical significance is reflected in a major retrospective entitled ‘Proximity’, which was initiated by the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool and subsequently presented at the renowned Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. 

 

The series ‘Personal Space’, produced between 1980 and 1984, forms the psychological and domestic centrepiece of his early work. In it, McCoy documented families going about their daily lives in the supposedly safe surroundings of living rooms and gardens – primarily in his own family home in Ainsdale, as well as at the homes of friends and neighbours. Methodologically, he drew inspiration from the carefree aesthetic of private family snapshots. Through tight, often skewed and unusually framed compositions, he deliberately imitated ‘photographic errors’. The candid shots eschew any artificial staging and deconstruct the classic documentary style with a gentle, humorous eye. They depict quirky everyday situations and make ‘Personal Space’ an intimate, dense chronicle of family closeness and human relationships in Britain in the early 1980s

The IKS Collection contains eight signed prints from the series ‘Personal Space, 1980–1984’.

 

Personal Space, 1980 - 1984

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Space, 1980-1984. Archival pigment print, 35 x 52 cm (paper size), signed © Stephen McCoy / courtesy IKS PHOTO Collection