My Essay On Photographer Richard Billingham April 2014

For my essay I have chosen to write about English photographer and artist Richard Billingham, who is best known for his photo-books which includes the critically acclaimed book "Ray's A Laugh" which was first published in 1996. Ray's A Laugh (1996) is a portrayal of the poverty and deprivation that Billingham experienced as a child growing up and it focuses on the lives of his alcoholic father Ray and his chain-smoking mother Liz.

In this essay I will provide a biography of Richard Billingham, which will include details of his personal life and how he initially became interested in photography and art. This essay will also feature an analysis of his greatest works and upcoming projects, and it will conclude with my own opinion of his work.

Biography

Portrait of Richard Billingham by Johnnie Shand Kydd (from internet pathshala.net)

Richard Billingham was born on the 25th of September 1970 in Birmingham, England. He grew up in Cradley Heath with his father Ray and mother Liz and younger brother Jason in a run-down council flat in Birmingham. His child-hood was one of great poverty and often deprivation because his father was an alcoholic, and his brother was in even taken into care at one point because of trouble at home. The young Billingham had always expressed an interest in art, and his ambition was to become an artist, not a photographer. He first began his career as a painter and he studied a foundation course in art at The Bournville College of Art and he later went on to study at The University of Sunderland.

However, Billingham felt that his three years at the University of Sunderland had not really increased his knowledge of photography and art. " I learned more at my foundation course at Bournville than my three years at Sunderland. The only thing I learned  was the ability to criticize my own work, and I didn't even learn that in any great depth." (Billingham, 2010, The Genius of Photography). He graduated from Sunderland University in 1994. His photo-book Ray's A Laugh was released in 1996  and it was a massive success for the then 26-year-old, and it made other photographers take notice of his talent for photography. In 1997 not very long  after graduating from Sunderland University, Richard Billingham was selected to take part in the exhibition Sensation at The Royal Academy of Art, which displayed the collection of artist Charles Saatchi and it also featured the work of new up-coming  British artists. Also in 1997, Billingham received The Citigroup Photography Prize in recognition of his work. Following the huge success of Ray's A Laugh, Billingham found himself invited to various galleries and socializing with people from the art world. On one such occasion, he met artist Anthony Reynolds who was greatly impressed by the young Billingham's work. Reynolds would later become his gallerist and he acted as a mentor to Billingham throughout his career. Although Richard Billingham has enjoyed a remarkably successful career in photography, he has never quite been able to re-create the success of his first photo-book Ray's A Laugh, which initially launched his career as a photographer. Richard Billingham currently lives in Swansea and he works as a lecturer in Fine Art Photography at the University of Gloucestershire. He still travels widely and often participates in exhibitions abroad.

Untitled, Ray's A Laugh, Richard Billingham(1996)from internet ameenanil.blogspot.ie/2011_07_01_archivehtml

Work&Projects 

Richard Billingham's greatest and most successful work to date would have to be his first photo-book, Ray's A Laugh, which provides us with a rare insight into what it was truly like growing up in the chaotic and troubled Billingham household. The photographs are primarily focused on Billingham's parents Ray and Liz, but his brother Jason is also featured in the series.His father Ray is observed to be an unstable and often violent alcoholic, while his mother Liz is an obese chain-smoker with an obsession for jigsaws and other knick-knacks which can be seen all around their home. It is immediately clear that both Ray and Liz are troubled individuals with some serious problems, but their charming personalities and obvious flaws endear them to us because we can relate to them in some way and that makes them even more lovable characters.


The photographs were taken on the cheapest film that Billingham could find, and the result is brash colours and a poor focus which adds to the authenticity and over-all frankness of the series. In a way the photographs may be likened to that of a family album as it features members of Billingham's family, but it is a family album that no family would ever make because it consists of photographs that are embarrassing and natural. Ray's A Laugh  features scenes from daily family life that are both embarrassing and comical; it is basically a behind the scenes look at family life .Billingham manages to captures his family at their most relaxed, such as photographs of Ray and Liz eating their dinner as they watch television in the living room. This photograph is particularly comical because we see that Ray's eyes are actually closed, and it appears that he has either blinked or fallen asleep while eating. Meanwhile, Liz's expression is quite blank as she looks at the television and she is so focused on the screen that she is unaware of what Ray is doing.
Another comical photograph includes one where we see a startled Ray flinching back in his seat and throwing his hands up in the air defensively when one of their pet cats jumps in fright near where he is sitting. This is one of the more unusual photographs from the Ray's A Laugh , as Billingham

Untititled, Ray's A Laugh(1996)

Billingham's other most prominent works include "Zoo", and "Black Country". In 2006 Billingham exhibited a major new series of photographs and videos which were inspired by his fond child-hood memories of visiting Dudley Zoo. He simply named this series "Zoo", and it features photographs of animals found at Dudley Zoo such as lions, gorillas, monkeys, giraffes and crocodiles. Meanwhile, "Black Country" was released in 1997 and consists largely of landscape photographs taken by Billingham close to where he grew up . He used direct snapshots to reveal the degenarated urban area where he was raised.

My Opinion

In my opinion Richard Billingham is an enormously talented photographer and artist. Billingham has overcome a child-hood of poverty and deprivation to become a renowned photographer and artist in his own right, and I greatly admire him from this. His photo-book Ray's A Laugh features real,  genuine people with real problems, and it providers the viewer with a credible insight into the life of a chaotic family living in great poverty in Birmingham in Margaret Thatcher's Britain. From my research I learned that Billingham originally had his sights on becoming an artist and was not really interested in becoming a photographer. As a young student, Billingham first started taking photographers of his alcoholic father Ray, because he needed a patient model. His idea was to take the photographs and to use them as source material for his paintings. " But it was difficult to get him to stay still for more than 20 minutes at a time, so I thought that if I could take photographs of him, that would act as source material for these paintings and then I could make more detailed paintings later on. So that's how I got into photography." ( Richard Billingham, extract from The Genius of Photography:We Are Family episode )  Available at www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/billingham.shtml

Richard Billingham's greatest strength is his ability to change his focus and to make viewers really think about what his photographs actually mean, and he is never bound by one specific idea. Overall, I have enjoyed researching Richard Billingham as a photographer because his work is truly captivating and thought-provoking for viewers.

" It's your work that matters; you haven't got to bother what people think. You've just got to concentrate on your work and not be distracted- if you're good then you'll get recognised sooner or later." (Richard Billingham)






References/ Bibliography

• www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Billingham
• Black Country, The Public (2003)
• www.youtube.com/watch?V=NCQJlwrrVlK(Short 3min interview)
• www.pathshala.net
• Richard Billingham,(Internet), 2014, The Biography.comwebsite Available from http://www.biography.com/people/richardbillingham Accessed 17th March 2014 
• www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/billingham.shtml

No.words: 1,500

Pollution Is All Around Us-Photobook

You can preview and purchase my book here.

 About My Photo-book

The title of my photo book is Litter Is All Around Us. My photo book is based on the fact that pollution is really all around us, with litter as the most visible form of pollution. My aim for this photo book was to compare the litter found in the city with the litter found in the country-side. It seems that even in the green county-side litter is

I spent around five months taking photographs for my photo -book which involved traveling around the city centre and the park in Newbridge as well as the park near my home in Athgarvan. I used my own Fujifilm camera to take the photographs, which ranges from photographs of litter on the street/grass, to photographs of natural beauty such as trees and the River Liffey from the two parks. I also took several photographs which featured people such as Dublin City Council cleaners as they went about cleaning up the litter found in the city and I also took photographs of my father walking in the park and my mother as she recycled empty beer bottles.

My photo-book also includes several photographs of the River Liffey because I felt that the river was something that both the city and the country-side have in common-a river under threat from pollution. For my book cover I chose a photograph of a crushed Coca-Cola can, which I found in the grass in Newbridge. The idea was that this particular photo would be the most poignant and eye-catching because it shows how litter is truly out of place in our society.

"The Enclave"- By Richard Mosse

Review of Richard Mosse's "The Enclave" exhibition

Portrait of Richard Mosse

For our latest Understanding the Image class we visited the Royal Hibernian Academy to see Irish-born photographer Richard Mosse's exhibition "The Enclave". The exhibition featured at The Royal Hibernian Academy from  January 30th- March 12th 2014.  The Enclave is a result of Mosse's three-year exploration of the conflicted region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and was filmed on location in North Kivu in the east of Congo. This exhibition combines three medians; photographic images, sound, and film .

Richard Mosse is an Irish contemporary artist that works in both photography and video. He was born in county Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1980.  He is a keen photographer, artist, and film/documentary maker. He aims to challenge and break with the traditional, stereotypical depiction of war photography, and he succeeds in this by providing his own unique twist through the use of infrared cameras to depict the scenes of conflict one would find in the Congo. Mosse has an MFA in photography from Yale University, as well as a postgraduate diploma in fine arts from Goldsmith College in London.