[2][3] In 1974, he invented a photographic printing process that combined Laser Techniques and Gum Bichromate, wedding modern technology with historic procedure.
His gift as an artist, besides his printing technique, was a "capacity for finding the brooding presence lurking inside objects and people...."[5] Livick was born in Allerton-Bywater, West Yorkshire, Britain but emigrated to Canada with his family in 1947.
[10] He had no formal training in photography but found instructive ten years of work from 1963 on in commercial photographic studios in Montreal and Toronto.
[15][16] From 1978-1981, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, N.Y. and the David Mirvish Gallery in Toronto toured his photographic landscapes in a solo exhibition.
One of the group of works he called the "Calcutta Series" consists of very large prints (ten feet in length) which focus on religion in Kolkata.
[20][21] In 1993, he had a highly praised[21][7][20] solo show with a catalogue titled Calcutta (now Kolkata) at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (now part of the National Gallery of Canada), Ottawa.
[22] In 2017, a show Stephen Livick: Midway, going back to his work in the early 1980s, was held at the Woodstock Art Gallery, guest curated by Matthew Ryan Smith.