Born 2005 In Belfast, Northern Ireland

Jude McKay is a creative documentary photographer who, whilst completing his undergrad at Ulster University, has discovered his voice in photography, blending the style of documentary with the themes of mental health and the human condition as seen through the mind. His work primarily focuses on ‘Mental health and it’s relationship to the spaces we inhabit’, aiming to understand through the lens of photography, how to capture what the mind thinks or feels when it opens its eyes and looks around at the world it must inhabit.

During his undergrad studies, McKay explored this topic with his first ever project titled ‘Social Issue’ (2023), a series of 20 images that were a retrospective of his working struggle to integrate back into the world after the lifting of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in the United Kingdom. He would take this idea further into ‘Tether’ (2024), a project that told the story of a bonding and connection he had with his Father during lockdown. Able to spend more time together, McKay and his Father would frequently climb Black Mountain in West Belfast, an activity that brought them even closer together. However, as the restrictions gradually lifted and society began to open up again, this way to connect became lesser so.

After concluding ‘Tether’ in 2024, McKay entered 2025 with a new outlook on his practice. This outlook soon sparked ‘Epidemic’, a series of self-portraits that were described as “A dive into the mind of isolated people through an abstract lens”. Whilst very different from his documentary practices, Epidemic allowed McKay to delve deep into the darkest parts of the mind, drawing from it and emphasising the isolation that plagued the early 2020s, to create a compelling and insightful piece of art. Coming out of Epidemic, McKay was able to take the experiences of that project to create the concluding project for his undergrad study, ‘The Old Unfamiliar’ (2025-2026). This project that delved into McKay’s search for the faded memories of his childhood, showing how stresses of teenage and young adulthood kept those memories away. It was this project where McKay was finally able to realise his practice, finding the perfect blend between documentation, exploration of the mind and mental health.

In addition to his solo works, McKay has also taken part in various group exhibitions across galleries in Belfast such as PS-Squared and Belfast Exposed, whilst completing his undergrad. These exhibitions focused on themes such as mental health and growing up in a post-Troubles Belfast.