Stephen Livick

Stephen Livick
Born	(1945-02-11)February 11, 1945 Allerton-Bywater, West Yorkshire
Nationality	Canadian
Education	self-taught
Known for	Canadian photographer

Stephen Livick (born 1945) is a self-taught photographer with a wide range of subjects. He explored pigment processes in photography, and is credited as being the first to use a photographic printing process that combines Laser Techniques and Gum Bichromate. He is based in London, Ontario.

Career

Livick was born in Allerton-Bywater, West Yorkshire but grew up in Montreal. In 1980, his show ‘’Stephen Livick; Photographic Explorations’’ was held at the Art Gallery of Ontario. but influenced by Diane Arbus he changed his photographic practise in the early 1980s from objects to people. The result was two bodies of work, both about the entertainment industry in North America – "Middle America" (1981) and "Joints" (1982). In 1984, he began travelling to India to photograph and in 1992, had a solo show titled Calcutta at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (now part of the National Gallery of Canada), Ottawa. The "Calcutta Series" consists of 12 prints which focus on religion in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).

From then on, his work ranged widely from family portraits to portraits of individual. In 1996, the Macintosh Gallery, Western University in London, Ontario correctly titled its solo retrospective of his work Metaphorical Transformations to express his transformations as a photographer. The exhibition travelled to Yokohama, Japan. In 2017, his show Stepen Livick: Midway, about his work in the early 1980s, was held at the Woodstock Art Gallery.

In 1984, he was included in the group show,Seeing People, Seeing Space: Contemporary Photography from Ontario, Canada held at The Photographers Gallery in London, Ontario. In 2024, he was included in the Winnipeg Art Gallery's (the WAG-Qaumajuq's)'s four-person exhibition featuring work from the permanent collection Animating the Figure with Photography curated by Dr. Stephen Borys, WAG-Qaumajuq Director & CEO. His work in the show, all from the collection which holds work from 1981 to 1996, was said to often seek "to capture people when they gather in places where they are at their happiest".

Selected public collections

Livick's work has been widely collected, both in Canada and abroad, from the National Gallery of Canada and the WAG-Qaumajuq to the MoMA, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Fogg Art Museum, Boston.