At 19, Richard Billingham began to take photographs as reference material for his paintings. Unbeknownst to him at the time, these black and white images of his alcoholic father would allow him to become a pioneer of what is known as “Squalid Realism”. Billingham was raised in a council flat in Birmingham, his father drank incessantly and this caused his mother to move out. Over the two years of her absence, Billingham’s father’s situation deteriorated. He would sit at home, staring out the window and drinking home-brew all day long. Richard was studying as a painter but could not get his father to sit long enough to be painted so instead he bought a camera to take reference photos.
Billingham found that his photographs had a quality of realism that none of his paintings could ever fully capture so he did not finish most of them and stuck to photography as a new medium. Billingham’s images seem to capture the meditative and lost state of his father in the wake of his mother’s abandonment of the family. Richard’s father, Ray, starved himself and seemingly did nothing but drink. There is a vulnerability to Ray that is captured by his son’s photography. Once Billingham could afford to print in colour he used the cheapest option available to him with gives his photos a painting-like feel but retains all of the realism of the black and white shots.
After two years his mother, Liz, returned to the flat now own a plethora of pets and harbouring an obsession for colours and bright colours. This changes the dynamic of Billingham’s photography greatly. No longer is the subject a lost soul but now it is more about suffocation and claustrophobia. Ray seems more trapped in himself than he ever was alone.
Billingham’s work is often regarded as a look into the lives of people dealing with one of the highly impoverished areas of Britain and of two highly flawed yet redeemable people. His works are currently held in several collections including The Tate in London.
Aisling Kane digital photography 