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Richard Billingham
Hardcover in very good condition. No jacket. Signed by Billingham on FEP. First edition. Published for exhibitions in Birmingham, Dublin, Brno and GOteborg from June 2000 to 2001. HCW
94 pages, Hardcover
First published December 20, 2006
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About the author
Richard Billingham
10 books3 followersRichard Billingham was born in Birmingham and studied at the University of Sunderland. He began taking photographs of his family in their council flat in 1990 to use as studies for paintings. However when he exhibited the photographs as works in their own right, they quickly brought him to the attention of the art world. His photographs have been hailed as a mass of contradictions and praised for their lack of condescension. They are an unique and highly personal document of working- class identity in Britain, showing a 'warts and all' look at the life of Billingham's family.
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January 5, 2008
Another photographer I really like, for a lot of my own complex reasons as much as their compositional brilliance, and who influenced my photographic work quite a bit last year. First part of this book are selections from Billingham's Ray's A Laugh, images he took in the early 90's of his family. He was in art college at the time and was actually taking the shots as material to base his painting dissertation on, but when his profs saw them they recommended he scrap the painting and focus on photography. A year later he won the Turner Prize with them, the git!
These appeal to me because they are an honest, uncontrived and intimate look at a dysfunctional, lower-class family. It is sympathetic too, in that it is Billingham's own family, and he does walk the line between loving them, but separating himself from them by capturing their painful lives with his camera. There is a need to detach himself from their pain that anyone with a remotely fucked up family can relate to. Fascinating to view.
Second half of book is of Billingham's more recent work, urban British landscapes, and while they are pretty good, they don't touch his first work.
These appeal to me because they are an honest, uncontrived and intimate look at a dysfunctional, lower-class family. It is sympathetic too, in that it is Billingham's own family, and he does walk the line between loving them, but separating himself from them by capturing their painful lives with his camera. There is a need to detach himself from their pain that anyone with a remotely fucked up family can relate to. Fascinating to view.
Second half of book is of Billingham's more recent work, urban British landscapes, and while they are pretty good, they don't touch his first work.
Displaying 1 of 1 review