Before you have even made your way across the creaking floorboards of the foyer of Anthony Reynolds Gallery, you are engulfed by a print at the far end of the room so large it could be the backdrop for a stage play. The photo appears to be of idyllic woodland circling a pond, a modern day Constable. The image is lush and its intense viridescence further draws you closer. At this point a feeling of discernment creeps in, like the weeds that are strangling each other and crawling up the trees, or the algae that seems to spread infectiously across the water before your eyes. You realize that this is not an oasis, but an honest, unkept sanctum of nature, concentrated and allowed to run wild. One gets the sense that although this place is untouched by man, man is never too far away: The overgrown space, shows a desperation to survive, that is in contrast to the spacious fields and lazy cows visible through a clearing. This space is a hinterland, a by-product of human habitation. I found myself searching for an upturned shopping trolley or a pylon on the skyline, but there is nothing so obvious. Amazingly, through absence and seemingly effortless banality, Billingham is able to give a fascinating insight into human behavior. This sets the mood for the show, as every picture is intrinsically human. There are images of animals, the artist’s family, particularly babies, suburbia, and the bed seems to be symbolic of raw humanity.
The exhibition holds more landscapes of hills dotted with cows, some with rolling dark skies, some in colour and some in monochrome. Many are 3” by 8” rectangles, small enough that you can possess the landscape, and clustered in groups, like snapshots from a train window. Indeed, Billingham exercises a range of techniques: A photo of the sunlight bursting through a lattice of branches, has a playful feel, and a shot of a tiger behind bars is out of focus, relaying the creatures movement and instant prominence. There are pictures with cheap brash colours, reminiscent of his ‘Ray’s a Laugh’ series, and others that are gritty like the view of a hairy sand dune in grainy black and white. Altogether this range is fulfilling for the viewer.
Billingham held an exhibition here in 1995, showing his abrasive ‘Rays a Laugh’ photographs, and so it seems fitting to have an updated view of his family life. Interestingly, the previous work was very upfront but subsequently revealed a delicate humanity, this has developed into pictures that are more muted yet still ultimately as hard-hitting. There is an obvious class difference too; Billingham’s new images of country fields and terrace houses finds his present family life in a middle class situation, yet the subtle disconcerting details hark back to the working-class environment of 'Ray’s a Laugh'. All of Billingham’s photos tow you along like this, their subtlety probes and leaves you haunted.
