Richard Billingham-Family in Crisis

Richard Billingham is who one might call desperate, desperate in a sense that he has gone on documenting his family at their lowest. Documentary photography can be based on any topic so in that sense he has not broken any rules there, he must have thought of the reaction he would get from his images, and that is what makes them generate the amount of attention that they received. His situation isn't specific to him though, this is an everyday scene in a lot of homes around the United Kingdom.

He could have been depressed by seeing his Dad drunk off his face almost every day and his obese Mother who just sits and does jig saw puzzles all day. Coming home to this reality everyday must have helped him to be more determined not to end up in a situation like this in the future himself and photography was more of a gate way out of this kind of situation.

This is the most basic modern photography can get, the images were taken with a point and shoot 35mm camera that the family must have had lying around the house. Looking at the images from a photographic stand point; the images are of a very poor picture quality due to being under-exposed.

Looking at the composition of the images, one could straight away tell what the purpose of the images were, saying this though different titles could be given to the collection. For some it could be titled around domestic violence, alcohol abuse or life on benefits.

It feels wrong to say I have a favourite image, but the one that has caught my attention is the picture of his Dad falling over and he took the picture just before he landed on the floor.