Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Critical Analysis Of Richard Billingham Photography - 974 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

Richard Billingham has established himself as one of the quintessential British artists of the 1990 s. While in many respects, his aesthetic style remains distinctive from that of other young British artists, his work concerns issues often explored by his contemporaries. In this essay, I will discuss a selection of what I believe to be his most interesting and definitive photographs, in addition to a comparison of Billingham's work, ideology, and myth with those of principal y Bas. The son of an unemployed mechanic and an obese housewife, Richard Billingham was born in 1970 near Birmingham, England.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts in 1994 from the University of Sunderland, where as an undergraduate, he took the photographs that have become his best-known works. These large, colorful, energetic and uniformly untitled prints were taken over a period of seven years and compiled into a photo essay entitled Rays a Laugh. These same images were included in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including Mo MAs New Photography exhibition in 1996, and the infamous Sensation exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1997 and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999. Originally intended to serve as studies for paintings, photographed with an ordinary auto-focus camera, and developed at the local drug store, Billingham did not consider himself much of a photographer and was largely unconcerned with the technical formality of photography: 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. Accordingly, this lax method has not gone unnoticed by Billingham's critics: Almost every rule of photography is badly broken: pictures are out of focus, over-exposed, printed with a grain so visible that the image beneath is almost completely obscured... on some very basic level, Billingham's may well be the worst photographs Ive ever seen professionally published, and never mind for now that theyre also some of the best. In this respect, Billingham differs greatly from many young British artists who exhibit near-obsessive technical prowess. For instance, Ron Muecks super realistic sculptures, Jenny Savilles mammoth nudes, and Mark Wallingers equine portraits all consistently wow their audience by technique alone, inviting the viewer to endlessly wonder how much talent, how much training, and how many hours of affectionate labor went into the production of the pieces presented before them.

The unrestrained aesthetic realism in the aforementioned artists work is part of a characteristic which seems to be present throughout the breadth of the y Bas creations; as observed by Jerry Sale, ... the YBA aesthetic -- if reduced to its simplest component -- is realism; some might say, realism with a vengeance. We may view Billingham's disconcert with photographic technique as a form of realism itself - one which reflects the typical use of the medium by every day people in every day life. From this perspective, Billingham's approach is in perfect accordance with that of his British contemporaries. By removing the professional qualities from the prints, Billingham removes the artistic pretense from the photographer - With no backdrops, no lighting, no experienced models or professional processing, Billingham has no physical advantage over any amateur photographer, and all that remains to differentiate between the product of the master and the product of the novice is the intangible integration of talent which Billingham undoubtedly possesses. Naturally, it is not simply how he takes his photos, but what he is photographing which plays an enormous role in the realism of Billingham's work.

The photographs are most often taken in his parents home, a cramped lower-middle-class British housing project. The rooms are brightly painted and wallpapered, shelves and table tops often cluttered with seemingly miscellaneous and inconsequential ornaments, an aesthetic which connotes both liveliness and idle desperation. As described by Jim Lewis, Billingham's home seems, at first glance, to be an almost comically horrible place to be, with its airless rooms stuffed full of broken-down furniture, its violence and abjection, and hopelessness, and mess. Yet there is a positive energy that perseveres in these images, and this paradox of comedy and tragedy, of animation and stagnation exists as a constant theme in Billingham's work.

The subjects are nearly exclusively his parents, Liz and Ray, his younger brother, Jason, and their menagerie of house pets, though there is an obvious concentration on his father. Billingham documents Rays chronic alcoholism in its various manifestations, the less ambiguous shots of which include Ray lying next to the toilet bowl, several prints of Ray taking swigs of booze, and a few scuffles between Ray and Liz (This puts an interesting twist on Billingham's amateur photographic mannerisms: In some cases it looks as if he was none too sober himself when he pressed the shutter button (Lewis) ). While the images from Rays a Laugh form a narrative, they are simultaneously circuitous, in accordance with the lives of his subjects. As described by Billingham, There really isnt a beginning or an end. My family always stays the same, they watch the same things, they have the same patterns to their lives, they talk about the same things (Lingwood). Such troublesome depictions of Rays alcoholism raise several questions regarding the relationship between Billingham and Ray; as photographer and subject, but most urgently, as son and father.

Billingham [takes] pictures that maintain a familiarity with their subject while at the same time [uphold] the cold-blooded distance of an observer (Tsingou). It is not Billingham's reaction to attempt to catch his father as he falls face-first out of the easy chair and onto the floor - rather, he snaps a photo of it. Likewise, the shot of Ray over the toilet inspires the same thought: Its a remarkable photograph, claus...


Free research essays on topics related to: realism, rays, photographs, ray, photographer

Research essay sample on Critical Analysis Of Richard Billingham Photography

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com