Artist Analysis #7

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham is an English photographer who is best known for his series called "Who's Looking at the Family?" later published into a book called "Rays a Laugh".  In which he documents his family life and captures his childhood memories of growing up in poverty with an alcoholic father and an obese mother. As it turns out, Billingham actually ended up becoming a photographer almost by accident.  He graduated from Sutherland University in 1994 with a degree in fine arts, specialising in painting. So originally his photos were intended to be used only as source images for his paintings and nothing more. It was until later that he realised the uniqueness he had captured and became interested in film and photography professionally.

This image is part of a set from an exibition called "Who's Looking at the Family?" All the photos from this series were taken at his families house. This photo in particular shows an older man in a sports coat sitting in a chair, pulling back from the camera covering his mouth with his hand, as if he's about to sneeze. Above him is a black and white cat suspended in mid air. The surrounding room seems to be untouched by the photographer and seems quite natural. This photo has a sort of candid feel to it, like a snap shot. All his pictures would be taken on the cheapest film he could find, and contain many aspects of consumer photography, such as harsh shadows, brash colours, and bad focus. However this all seems to add to the authenticity of the images. This photo probably was taken with a small aperture to get the background blur, and a fast shutter of no lower than 200 because of the flash.