When presented in the "Sensation" exhibition orchestrated by advertising executive Charles Saatchi at London's Royal Academy in 1997, Richard Billingham's photographs caused quite a stir. Between Damien Hirst's formaldehyde shark and Sarah Lucas' sexual provocations, a 26-year-old boy revealed the intimacy of the lumpenproletariat, in this case his family, in Cradley Heath, a suburb of Birmingham.
Slumped on his brown sofa, collapsed on the toilet, gesticulating, meet Ray, the alcoholic father. Mired in her floral dresses and obesity, all cavities out when she smiles, with a cigarette in her mouth and a gesture that's rarely tender, meet Elizabeth, the mother. Between the two of them, Jason, the younger brother, appears from time to time, a blond teenager, pink... and awkward. Then there are dogs and cats, snakes and rats, who seem to reign supreme over the sinister home. The images form the album of a trashy, uncompromising family, full of muted violence and kitschy porcelain.
As an art student at the University of Sunderland in London, Billingham originally dreamed of painting, and contemplated using these photographs as the basis for his canvases. He eventually chose to exhibit them in their raw state. The crush of the flash, the chaos of the compositions, the disorder of the interiors: the snapshot in all its cruelty.
On the edge of poverty
Far from the kind of committed reportage that British photography is famous for, over the years Billingham composed a (self-)portrait on the edge of poverty. "My father Raymond is a chronic alcoholic," Billingham explained. "He doesn't like going outside. (...) 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."
As for his little brother, Jason, "[he] was taken into care when he was 11 but is now back with Ray and Liz again. (...) Ray says Jason is unruly. Jason says Ray's a laugh but doesn't want to be like him." This was how Billingham coldly described the loved ones he made into his models. The quote "Ray's a laugh" became the title of the book published soon after, reissued this spring as Ray's a Laugh: A Reader. But it's hardly about laughter.
This voyeuristic revolution in so-called "fine-art" photography, in full bloom, caused a rapid and sometimes unhealthy craze on the art market, from London to Paris, where the Agnès b. gallery was the first to exhibit them. "Anyone who has parents of any kind (...) would wonder whether it were possible to justify snapping their moments of distress and plastering them all over the walls of the Royal Academy," novelist Nick Hornby worried at the time.
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