work was likened to that of other contemporary
British photographers, Martin Parr and Nick Wap-
lington. But other critics accused Billingham of sen-
sationalism. Their polemic revolved around moral
questioning and the notion that the work irrespon-
sibly commodified the private reality of the artist’s
family,providingspectacleforthepopularentertain-
mentofothersinthestyleofarealitytelevisionshow.
It is quite ironic then that the next major public
venue for Billingham’s work was the controversial
showSensation; Young British Artists from the Sa-
atchi Collectionin 1997. This group exhibition was
likely truly responsible for establishing Richard Bill-
ingham’s place in the British art scene and launching
his international career, with concurrent solo shows
in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. His first major
commissioned work came the following year from
Artangel (London) in conjunction with the British
Broadcasting Corporation. For this assignment Bill-
ingham producedFishtank(1998), a 45-minute film
comprised of Hi-8 video footage. Rather than a
narrative, the piece functions more as a cinematic
vignette of the artist’s series of family photographs,
depicting everyday actions such as Ray feeding the
goldfish or Liz playing with her pets.
Fishtank aired to mixed reviews on BBC2 in
December 1998. Again, the arguments for and
against the power of Billingham’s out-of-focus fa-
mily scenes revolved around the question ‘‘is this art
or social commentary?’’ Critics suggested it was
difficult for an audience to understand the film
because there is no voiceover or introductory narra-
tion; a criticism which echoed earlier claims that
Billingham’s photographs were difficult to under-
stand because they were not captioned like tradi-
tional documentary images. Was the artist seriously
challenging his audience or merely exploiting his
own family and their miserable living conditions?
Billingham later made other films in this vein;Plays-
tation(1999) features a close-up of his brother hands
while playing a video game. His nail-bitten fingers
dart over the controls of the game in a mundane,
repetitive, yet mesmerizing fashion.
Billingham received further critical attention in
2001 when he was nominated for the Turner Prize,
a prestigious annual award given by the Tate Gal-
lery to a British artist for a significant body of work.
Billingham was shortlisted on the strength of his
major solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Bir-
mingham (2000), which featured his now infamous
series of family-based photographs and videos.
Although he did not win the prize, he was a notable
candidate because it was rare for a photographer to
even be nominated. Since then Billingham’s more
recent work has engaged concerns of landscape aes-
thetic. Even though he has photographed land-
scapes since the early 1990s, this component of his
work has been largely overshadowed by the contro-
versial family pictures.
Billingham’s series of untitled landscapes from
1992–1997 depict semi-urban places; odd forgetta-
ble spaces located between rural land and housing
estates. But these places were not forgotten by Bill-
ingham, who associates these mundane landscapes
of derelict playground areas and grassy industrial
wastelands with the rites of passage of his boyhood.
By contrast, landscape images included in the ex-
hibitionNew Pictures(2003) at Anthony Reynolds
Gallery introduced a new perspective of Billing-
ham’s longstanding yet overlooked interest in
beau-ty and nature. Experimenting with using a
medium format camera for the first time, the new
photographs depict various natural landscapes
where the artist’s emphasis is about experiencing a
place for the first time, rather than documenting a
specific or personal space. Formal concerns of pat-
tern, texture, and space override any apparent
social comment Billingham may wish to convey,
and this new work is obviously a concerted effort
by a young artist trying to expand his range in style
and technique.SARA-JAYNEParsons
Seealso:Ethics and Photography; Family Photo-
graphy; Parr, Martin; Vernacular PhotographyBiography
Born in Birmingham, England, 1970. University of Sunder-
land, B.A. (Hons) Fine Art, 1991–1994; Felix H. Man
Memorial Prize, 1995; The Citibank Private Bank Photo-
graphy Prize, 1997; Turner Prize Shortlist, Tate Gallery,
London, 2001; Glen Dimplex Artist Award Shortlist,
IMMA, Dublin, 2001; Sargent Fellowship, British School
in Rome, 2002; Prince of Wales Bursary for the Arts,
Athens, 2003; ArtSway Residency, New Forest, Hamp-
shire, 2003; Artist in Residence, VIVID, Birmingham,- Living in Stourbridge, England.
Individual Exhibitions
1996 Anthony Reynolds Gallery; London, England
1996 National Museum of Film and Photography; Brad-
ford, England
1996 Portfolio Gallery; Edinburgh, Scotland
1997 Luhring-Augustine; New York, New York
1997 Regen Projects; Los Angeles, California
1997 Galerie Jennifer Flay; Paris, France
1998 Anthony Reynolds Gallery; London, England
1999 Galerie Monica Reitz; Frankfurt am Main, Germany
1999 British School at Rome; Rome, Italy
2000 Ikon Gallery; Birmingham, England and touring to
Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland; Brno House of
Arts, Brno, Czech Republic; Hasselbad Centre, Gote-BILLINGHAM, RICHARD