Ray’s A Laugh

I first became aware of Richard Billingham as one of his images was featured in a book I have recently read (Cotton, Charlotte (2009) The photograph as contemporary art. New Edition. London: Thames & Hudson), which introduced the concept behind his exhibition Ray’s A Laugh, and this was expanded upon reading Gerry Badger’s The Genius of Photography (2011, Quadrille Publishing Ltd; paperback edition). 

Billigham documented the daily lives of his alcoholic father, Ray together with his mother, Elizabeth. The shots illustrating the two different passages resonated strongly with me, but one in particular stood out. 

I grew up with a rather abusive step-father, a coward of a man that would frequently take to me with his fists. One day when I was around 13 years old, he came for me once again, and in fear I ran and throwing the closest thing at hand as an obstacle to give me time to get away. That just happened to be my cat, Jess. Jess I’m pleased to say was unharmed, and I spent that morning hiding in a tree in the woods near my house. 

So seeing this image brought all that back in a flash. 

I was therefore very pleased to hear that ‘Ray’s A Laugh’ would be exhibited as part of the Guernsey Photography Festival. 

The Exhibit

I’m sorry to say that I came away from the exhibition with mixed feelings. Whilst I found some of the images to be fantastic, these were the same few images that I had seen reproduced in the aforementioned books. 

The rest of the collection appeared fairly mundane, and I found myself questioning why this exhibition has gained the reputation that it had. My honest opinion was an unasked question - had Billingham simply got lucky with those shots that were standouts? I asked this because there were a great many images on display, laid out in rows upon glass covered tables and I felt as though the stand out shots were very much watered down by the inclusion of so many mundane shots. 

With reflection I find myself wondering if this was the exact point of so many images. 

Billingham was documenting his family life, and generally life is a mundane series of events broken by the occasional high or low. These are the extraordinary moments that we remember, just I walked away from the exhibition not so much remembering the ordinary but those moments that were extraordinary. 

I think another part of the series’ appeal is because it really is an honest depiction of family life. The home could belong to any of us, and the familiar sight of a live lived from the front room sofa is something many of can relate to – 

For example

Compared to a shot from my own family album. 

As I mentioned above, the image of the cat immediately grabbed me because I connected it directly to something in my own life. I would be surprised if other people have not had that exact same reaction as me, but to completely different images in the series. 

I’m still unsure quite how I feel regarding ‘Rays A Laugh’, and I’m not sure how much of that was due to the presentation of the series in the gallery. I will check out a copy of the book at some point to review it once again. Perhaps in that format something will come to me that I perhaps overlooked before. But as I look back on it, I feel more that the appeal is in the work as a series of remarkable moments against the backdrop of the banality of life, rather then as a collection of standout moments.