Nació en 1970 , comenzó a tomar fotos mientras estudiaba bellas artes en la universidad de Sunderland, su familia fué su tema principal, los fotografió tanto que de pronto dejaron de notar la presencia de la cámara teniendo como resultado imagenes totalmente espontáneas y naturales. Su primera exposición fue en la barbican art gallery, en Londres en 1994, titulada 'who's looking at the family', dos años después algunas fueron publicadas su libro 'ray's a laugh'.
A continuación presentamos un fragmento de una pequeña entrevista donde el autor habla mas a fondo acerca de su trabajo :
'my father raymond is a chronic alcoholic.
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.
my younger brother jason was taken into care when he was 11,
but now he is back with ray and liz again.
recently he became a father.
'dad was some kind of mechanic, but he's always been an
alcoholic. it has just got worse over the years.
he gets drunk on cheap cider at the off license.
he drinks a lot at nights now and gets up late.
originally, our family lived in a terraced house,
but they blew all the redundancy money and, in desperation,
sold the house. then we moved to the council tower block,
where ray just sits in and drinks.
that's the thing about my dad, there's no subject he's interested
in, except drink.'
'it's not my intention to shock, to offend, sensationalise,
be political or whatever, only to make work that is as spiritually
meaningful as I can make it -
in all these photographs I never bothered with things like
the negatives. some of them got marked and scratched.
I just used the cheapest film and took them to be processed
at the cheapest place. I was just trying to make order out of chaos.'
http://www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/billingham.html
A continuación presentamos un fragmento de una pequeña entrevista donde el autor habla mas a fondo acerca de su trabajo :
'my father raymond is a chronic alcoholic.
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.
my younger brother jason was taken into care when he was 11,
but now he is back with ray and liz again.
recently he became a father.
'dad was some kind of mechanic, but he's always been an
alcoholic. it has just got worse over the years.
he gets drunk on cheap cider at the off license.
he drinks a lot at nights now and gets up late.
originally, our family lived in a terraced house,
but they blew all the redundancy money and, in desperation,
sold the house. then we moved to the council tower block,
where ray just sits in and drinks.
that's the thing about my dad, there's no subject he's interested
in, except drink.'
'it's not my intention to shock, to offend, sensationalise,
be political or whatever, only to make work that is as spiritually
meaningful as I can make it -
in all these photographs I never bothered with things like
the negatives. some of them got marked and scratched.
I just used the cheapest film and took them to be processed
at the cheapest place. I was just trying to make order out of chaos.'
http://www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/billingham.html
