Stephen McCoy: Proximity
The Martin Parr Foundation presents Proximity, a retrospective of British photographer Stephen McCoy. For more than forty-five years, McCoy has lived, worked, and photographed on Merseyside, producing a body of work that reflects a sustained engagement with the people and places of the region. The exhibition brings together projects from 1979 to the present, including two recent ongoing series, and traces the development of his practice across decades of social, cultural, and personal change.
The works on display range from studies of housing estates in Ainsdale to portraits of communities in Skelmersdale, from demolition sites in Liverpool and Preston to the domestic spaces of homes and gardens. They extend further to the coastline of the Mersey and Ribble rivers and to a more intimate exploration of family history. Taken together, these photographs chart a long-term inquiry into both landscape and human relationships, moving across documentary observation, conceptual experimentation, and personal reflection.
Among McCoy’s earliest projects, Housing Estates (1979–1983) examined the stark geometry of new developments in Ainsdale, beginning with high-contrast black-and-white images that emphasised shadow and repetition, and later evolving into colour typologies of identical bungalows marked by subtle individual modifications. During the same years he photographed demolition sites in Liverpool and Preston, capturing transitional landscapes poised between destruction and renewal. In 1983 he served as photographer-in-residence in Skelmersdale, producing images of everyday life in a new town shaped by overspill populations from Merseyside and the decline of 1970s industry.
The exhibition also highlights McCoy’s sustained interest in the domestic sphere. Personal Space (1980–1984) focused on families at home and in gardens through tightly cropped, often oblique images that reveal the humour and quirks of daily life. Archaeology of a Carpet (2003) used the contents of a vacuum cleaner cylinder as an unconventional archive of household activity. More recently, Every House My Mother Lived In (2019–ongoing) has retraced his own family’s journey through nine different homes, presenting memory and history as inseparable from place.
A broader concern with landscape runs throughout his career. River to River (1985–1990) followed the Merseyside coastline from the river Mersey to the river Ribble, observing sites in constant flux. His ongoing series The Rimrose Valley (2016–present) turns to a country park that had once been a council tip and pig farm and was later threatened by new road development, today a vital space for wildlife and community recreation.
McCoy’s approach is grounded in a conviction that photography must balance concept, technique, and creativity. His practice demonstrates that familiarity with a place enables a depth of understanding that connects geography, autobiography, and metaphor. His photographs of Merseyside are not nostalgic records but explorations of belonging, memory, and the passage of time.
Over the course of his career McCoy has combined teaching, freelance commissions, and personal projects. Since 1997 he has also worked collaboratively with photographer Stephanie Wynne, with whom he produced Are You Living Comfortably?, now part of the University of Salford Art Collection. His work has been widely exhibited, including in Home Sweet Home at Rencontres d’Arles (2019) and at Institut pour la Photographie, Lille.
Proximity originated at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, where it was curated by Max Gorbatskyi and first presented from November 2024 to January 2025.
About the Author
Stephen McCoy (b. 1954) is a British photographer living and working in Merseyside. His background is in documentary photography, with a particular emphasis on place, community, and environmental issues. Over more than forty-five years, he has developed a practice deeply rooted in the landscapes and people of Merseyside, combining social documentary, conceptual experimentation, and personal reflection.
Originally working independently on long-term personal projects, McCoy later built a career that has balanced artistic research with professional commissions for a wide range of clients. He also worked for many years as an educator in Further and Higher Education before forming the collaborative partnership McCoy Wynne with photographer Stephanie Wynne in 1997. Together, they have produced numerous bodies of work, including Are You Living Comfortably?, now part of the University of Salford Art Collection.
McCoy’s photographs have been widely exhibited, most recently in the group exhibition Home Sweet Home at Rencontres d’Arles (2019) and at the Institut pour la Photographie in Lille. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the UK, including the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, where his retrospective Proximity was first presented in 2024 before travelling to the Martin Parr Foundation.
His practice is defined by a sustained exploration of place and proximity, whether documenting housing estates, coastal landscapes, communities in transition, or the intimate spaces of family life.
Stephen McCoy: Proximity
02 October – 21 December 2025
Martin Parr Foundation – Bristol – UK
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