Lucy Copeland-Tucker: Tender Bite
July 26th, 2024
By Briá Purdy @briapurdyox
I first became aware of Lucy Copeland-Tucker’s photography following an exhibition in Paris in 2023. Featured in the exhibition was a silky and meditative portrait of her sister, Grace, taken in a pool in Ibiza. Back turned, half-submerged, the intimacy and tenderness is undeniable, and yet, we cannot see the subject’s face. The work, her photography, struck me. I was enamoured and immediately looked Lucy up online.
Lucy and I had gone to university together, years ago. We had been in the same French language class. I had no idea, then, that she was a photographer. Now, I contact her through that thin light of the past, hoping she will want to share her work with me. I have no idea if she will remember our shared time in Edinburgh, the grey cobblestones and misplaced verb conjugations. I glide through her online portfolio, a sultry parade of mostly black and white images of faces and fabric, all captured in delicate detail. I notice most the closed eyes, the clasped hands, the threads of garments and the glint of metal.
Then, another glint: an incoming email. Lucy agrees to sit down for a conversation. Her smiling face appears from the reflective black screen. She is exuberant and passionate as she recounts to me her beginnings in photography. We talk about playing with perspectives, queerness, and her thoughtful, community-oriented approach to fashion photography.
‘Riverrun', Sara, London, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
‘Mother of Pearl’, Daniel, London, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
Briá Purdy: First of all, can you introduce yourself and your practice to the readers?
Lucy Copeland-Tucker: My name’s Lucy, I’m a London-based photographer working between fine-art and fashion photography. My work is rooted in a personal thread and in abstraction/queering perspectives.
BP: Working with clothes as the subject of your fashion photography, how do you approach capturing fabric, something which moves, breathes, creates sound and texture, in a fixed format?
LCT: I shoot clothes the same way I shoot people and models. I feel like clothes have their own spirit; I try to work with pieces in a sculptural way, to play with a garment’s shape and make it new. I love textured pieces, strong structural pieces, asymmetry - anything that gives me scope for play, that I can frame differently.
I look a lot to painters like Lempicka, how she works with almost geometric composition, and to old Margiela imagery. “Inanimate” things, clothes and objects, are just as interesting for me as working with a model.
Lenka #001, London, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
Lenka #002, London, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
BP: Your photographs have an intimacy and a sense of tenderness to them - how do you approach capturing such moments in your work?
LCT: Thank you! I really try to root myself in the space when I’m shooting, to be with the model I’m working with completely. I try to be human, to connect with my model and bring them into that space, in order to create that thread.
BP: I’ve noticed that in your fashion photography you often focus on unusual, even oppositional features (such as the model’s back or clenched hands) - why does your lens linger on such details?
LCT: I tend to shoot what I see or notice - details that my eye is drawn to.
I like to invert perspective, to try to frame something you’ve seen before in a way that makes you see it differently, to arrange the shapes in a different way. For example, in my image of indentations in the back of a blazer, I really loved the shape and seams of that piece, how it creased with the body, so I had our model, Dayhely, push their shoulders together to exaggerate those shapes.
I love making things abstract, cropping in, drawing you really deeply into that intimate space, taking something that feels like it exists in its own world. I’m always trying to find ways to make you see differently.
'Mother of Pearl', London, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
'Dreamer's Handbook', Penelope Under Armstrong Bridge, Newcastle, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
BP: How do you feel that queerness and queer identities can be represented and reflected through your photography? Is it important to you that queerness is a discussion point of your work?
LCT: My queerness has implicitly shaped, and continues to shape, my work and the way I see. I’m always trying to take photos which have a “bite”, strong photos which feel a bit dark, a bit rough-around-the-edges, but which have that softer, tender edge too. In my head, queerness embodies those two poles, a strength and a bite, a rawness, but a space that’s quite tender too. Playing with perspective also feels very queer to me.
'Dreamer's Handbook', Vika #001, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
'Dreamer's Handbook', Vika #002, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
BP: Having worked a lot with other creatives and young artists, how do you think artistic collaboration can help build community?
LCT: Collaboration is the backbone of community. I think it’s so important to work with people for the joy of it, to reach out to other artists, stylists or designers, whose work you really love and to organically create a constellation of people you like working with.
Having moved to London recently, without any creative network, collaboration has been indispensable. Reaching out to designers, stylists, new assistants whose work I admire has really helped me to build that space for myself, to create those links and to learn from other artists.
It’s generative too, in that you create this kind of outward spill of making things. Given the way that the creative industry has inherently prioritised the individual over the collective, encouraging undercutting other artists or gatekeeping for your own gain, it also feels very powerful to push back against that.
Rowan, London, 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
'Mother of Pearl' #002, Daniel, London 2024 ©Lucy Copeland-Tucker
BP: Looking ahead, what excites you the most about this medium in particular right now?
LCT: The move back to slow making, to slower processes like hand-printing, and community-based/collective-based work. Younger artists and photographers putting on group shows in grassroots galleries, carving out their own spaces. Lots of things!
BP: Thank you so much, Lucy, for taking the time to share your work and process with me.
Image credit: Marie Pichonnaz
About Lucy Copeland-Tucker
Lucy is a London-based portrait and fashion photographer. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in Paris and New York, and her photograph, Maggie, was nominated for the 2023 Scottish Portrait Award. Her work was also shown at Galerie Joseph Le Palais as part of the Just Women series curated by Slavica Veselinović. Lucy is currently completing her MA at the London College of Fashion.