Fused - Archive - RICHARD BILLINGHAM

Richard Billingham’s Black Country

Cradley Heath may initially sound a humble subject for the work of an internationally acclaimed artist to study, but for Richard Billingham it was his home and the origin of his artistic life. Richard’s relatively young and accomplished career has seen his work exhibited and coveted around the world, indeed he is possibly one of the last of the YBA’s generation. He is included in several major private collections, including Charles Saatchi’s and in 2001 was short-listed for the Turner Prize. Contrary to the brash extrovert reputations of his YBA contempories, Richard is quiet and contemplative, thoughtful and reflective, his work engaging through an emotional bond between his subject and viewer. In Black Country a new publication of photography specially commissioned by The Public, Richard returns home at night with a medium format camera, revisiting the same area, this time with a sense of closure, six years on.

Do you regard your work as documentary or fine art photography?
I suppose the primary intention of a documentary photographer is to document facts. My work often does this but it is not the primary intention. My intention is to make the best pictorial image I can.

Your photographic work is often characterized by your acute awareness of compositional devices and a keen eye for observational detail. Do you feel that this is a natural development from your former experience as a painter?
I was nineteen when I first began making photographs and I continued making them for the next five years or so without looking at the work of other photographers. This was because I did not consider photography Fine Art. I was making photographs to inspire my paintings as an Art student.
I only seriously studied the works of other painters. So early on I got my composition from painting. I think when you are a teenager and in your early twenties and trying to make original work as an artist, what you see around you, what images you study have a large effect on your development and helps shape your vision for many years later.
In my case I think it helped that I did not know about the work of other photographers, as I would have accidentally copied their visual ideas.

Do you still paint? If so in what capacity and what is your subject?
I only dabble. I don’t have the patience and time to invest. It’s much easier and quicker to press a button on a camera. I paint a little and keep sketchbooks because it has the effect of preventing me becoming lazy about looking. The subject could be anything.

In 2001 you were short listed for the Turner Prize what impact did this recognition have upon your artistic career?
I don’t think being nominated for the Turner Prize had that much effect on anything. It may have validated my work a little, I don’t know. It would have had a bigger effect if I had been awarded the prize. Whether I won it or not I had arranged to travel for the next twelve months anyway. I was not around.

Through your new book commissioned by the Public of images of Cradley Heath, and your subsequent exhibition at the Anthony Reynolds gallery, what are your formative memories of living in Cradley Heath?
My memories of Cradley Heath are playing on the street with other kids, (there were no parked cars congesting the streets back then); building camps on waste ground; exploring derelict terraced houses and factories; inspecting the stripy caterpillars you used to get on Oxford Ragwort weeds; finding mice nests under pieces of discarded corrugated iron in the graveyard. Most kids cannot do these things today, as parents are too fearful to let them outside in case they get run over or abducted. I am glad I grew up like this instead of spending time playing computer games or watching TV.

Your landscapes are silent, devoid of people yet littered with evidence of humanity’s presence, a frozen moment perhaps after the event that Man has passed away. Where are the people?
When I took the daytime pictures in 1997 I had already received a certain amount of recognition for my photographic work due to the publication “Rays a Laugh”, 1996. I started to get money. I found a belonging- the Art world consisted of other people like me that liked Art. I no longer had to work at Kwik Save, and so on. I was becoming more aware of things as an artist but I did not want to move out of Cradley Heath and let go of the emotional security and reassurance that my hometown afforded me.
To me, the daytime pictures embody that longing and sense of immanent loss rather than try to communicate some kind of human presence.
As for the people and traffic, they are everywhere except within the frames of the pictures since I would position myself on a street corner or whatever in a spot that I considered to be the best summary of what I wanted to capture. I would wait until no cars or people were going by, lift the camera quickly and take the picture. They were snapshots.

How do you position yourself towards your relationship with the landscape of Cradley Heath today?
I took the night-time pictures six years on to see how my relationship had changed to my hometown. I had moved away and traveled and excepted that I would not live there again. The night-time pictures are more settled maybe. There is no sense of loss like in the earlier work but more a sense of discovery. I think this is because I changed my approach to making them. They were no longer snapshots but medium format images made with long exposures. The photographs are very detailed and pick up much more information than your naked eye would see.

What holds your imagination about these urban environments?
I was born and grew up in those urban environments. As it happens I’m the sort of artist that gets most inspiration from childhood. Spending all that time playing in such places as a kid has left its mark on me. I think I will always come back from time to time and monitor how the region changes.

Through Vivid you are currently involved in a study between the relationship of captive animals, (in zoo environments), and their public audiences. What interests you about this subject?
As a kid my mum would take me to the local zoo, Dudley Zoo. I have fond memories and a few family photographs passed down from this time. Spending time in zoos now I have different thoughts and attitudes. I have always been very interested in Nature and going to see exotic animals surrounded by an urban environment in Dudley Zoo has had a profound effect. I think zoos are a perfect metaphor for our relationship to the rest of Nature and this is what I am investigating. I am doing it without sentimentality, anthropomorphism or making the animals look funny. I have not successfully seen this done before.

If you were an animal what would you be?
I am an animal and I would stay a human.

Richard Billingham: Black Country.With critical essay by Jonathan Watkins. Price £17.95
http://anthonyreynolds.com/past/05_billingham/pr.htm
Richard Billingham’s Black Country at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery.
David Osbaldestin