Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham (born 25 September 1970) is an English photographer and artist, film maker and art teacher. His work has mostly concerned his family, the place he grew up in the West Midlands, but also landscapes elsewhere. Billingham is best known for the Photobook Ray's A Laugh (1996), which documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray, and obese, heavily tattooed mother Liz. He has also published the collections Black Country (2003), Zoo (2007), and Landscapes, 2001–2003 (2008). He has made several short films, including Fishtank (1998) and Ray (2016). Billingham adapted the latter into his first feature film, Ray & Liz (2018), a memoir of his childhood. He won the 1997 Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize) and was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize. His work is held in the permanent collections of Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Government Art Collection in London. Billingham lives in Swansea on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales and holds professorships at Middlesex University and the University of Gloucestershire.