(Untitled) RAL 13 1994-96
Richard Billingham b. 1970
SFA4 colour photograph mounted on aluminium with matt seal
This work is from artist's series, Ray's a laugh published in 1996. Billingham wanted some source material for his painting and turned his recently acquired camera on his close but dysfunctional family in their west midlands flat.
I came across Richard Billingham in the focal points exhibition.
Billingham took a series of photographs of his family between 1990 and 1996 in a Stourbridge council flat in the British Midlands, originally intended as a source for paintings. The photographs were shot in a spontaneous style with a cheap instamatic camera on an out of date 35mm film. Antony Reynolds Gallery published many of the images in the book Ray's a Laugh in 1996 in which all the photographs in the series are untitled and many of them released in large scale prints like this one.
Tate -
'This book is about my close family. My father Raymond is a chronic alcoholic. He doesn’t like going outside and mostly drinks homebrew. My mother Elizabeth hardly drinks but she does smoke a lot. She likes pets and things that are decorative. They married in 1970 and I was born soon after. My younger brother Jason was taken into care when he was 11 but is now back with Ray and Liz again. Recently he became a father. Ray says Jason is unruly.
Jason says Ray’s a laugh but doesn’t want to be like him.
'This book is about my close family. My father Raymond is a chronic alcoholic. He doesn’t like going outside and mostly drinks homebrew. My mother Elizabeth hardly drinks but she does smoke a lot. She likes pets and things that are decorative. They married in 1970 and I was born soon after. My younger brother Jason was taken into care when he was 11 but is now back with Ray and Liz again. Recently he became a father. Ray says Jason is unruly.
Jason says Ray’s a laugh but doesn’t want to be like him.
(Quoted in Ray’s a Laugh, back cover.)
Billingham’s project recalls the work of American photographer Nan Goldin (born 1953) whose gritty photographs of herself, her lovers and her friends, taken in the 1970s and 80s, inspired a generation of young journalistic and art photographers. Her Ballad of Sexual Dependency, published as a book in 1986, shows people under the influence of drugs and alcohol in intimate and sometimes painfully raw situations.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/billingham-untitled-p11756/text-summary
Fish Tank
Parts of the filming make me feel uncomfortable such as when they are having an argument about money and who pays bills etc. In this documentary and series of photographs I feel Billingham exploits his family. We rarely see what happens in other people's home lives. Your home is a place were you feel most comfortable, because no one is judging you. I feel uploading the film on the internet has made Billingham's family vulnerable. For me, it would feel morally wrong. I would edit parts of the film leaving out parts that I feel would make my family vulnerable, leaving humorous and less explicit parts. However I respect his work because he has been brave but I don't particularly like it.
Fish Tank
Parts of the filming make me feel uncomfortable such as when they are having an argument about money and who pays bills etc. In this documentary and series of photographs I feel Billingham exploits his family. We rarely see what happens in other people's home lives. Your home is a place were you feel most comfortable, because no one is judging you. I feel uploading the film on the internet has made Billingham's family vulnerable. For me, it would feel morally wrong. I would edit parts of the film leaving out parts that I feel would make my family vulnerable, leaving humorous and less explicit parts. However I respect his work because he has been brave but I don't particularly like it.
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