Stephen McCoy @ OpenEye Gallery

Proximity represents Stephen McCoy’s distilled vision, the culmination of 45 years of photographic practice. Through his lens, McCoy captures the seemingly mundane, revealing layers of meaning and social commentary in the ordinary.

My introduction to McCoy's work came through Craig Atkinson’s Café Royal Books series, specifically Housing Estates Set 4, 1985. This particular collection struck a chord, and led me to looking at the ordinary.

Initially, I was drawn to the uniformity of the houses McCoy captured in the mid-1980s. However, my attention soon shifted to the individuality within that uniformity: how people organized their front gardens, the care or neglect visible in these spaces, and even the types of cars parked on their driveways. His work opened my eyes to the subtle markers of identity and care within residential landscapes.

This shift in perspective extended beyond an appreciation of McCoy’s images. It sparked an ongoing inquiry into the development of communities—how housing estates were constructed then, and how we design and build homes today. McCoy’s work rooted in observation and documentation, continues to inform my own ongoing research and exploration of the spaces we inhabit.

McCoy’s work looked beyond the privacy we expect and often create for ourselves in the home, part of the work takes us into space we share with family and friends, it details the fashion of the time, and the nuances of the things we had in our homes, below are some images I made on my phone, which take a closer looks at McCoy’s photographs.

Other work of McCoys on display in the exhibition include Housing estates. 1979-1983, Every House my mother lived in. 2019 - Present, Demolition sites 1991-1986, Skelmersdale. 1983-1984, The Rimrose Valley. 2016-Present, Archaeology of a carpet. 2003 and River to River. 1985-1990 below is a small selection of photos from the exhibition, but to really get a feel for the work I highly recommend you pay a visit to get a closer look at McCoy’s work.