Ray’s a Laugh: A Reader
Liz Jobey
MACK
English
In 1996, a book of photographs by an unknown young British photographer was launched on to the London contemporary art market to immediate popular and critical success. The pictures were taken within the claustrophobic, chaotic interior of a Birmingham council flat where the photographer’s father, Ray, an alcoholic, lived with Liz, his sedentary and occasionally violent mother, and his younger brother Jason.
For the public, including cultured, art-loving viewers, the pictures were a shock: more intimate, more personal, more oppressive than the well-meaning photojournalistic study of working-class poverty to which they were accustomed. Some saw them as a betrayal – exposing unsuspecting family members to potential humiliation – but from Richard Billingham’s point of view they made moral judgements and had no social or political purpose. He had taken them as reference images for his painting, and their lives as artworks were as much a result of the interventions of other editors and gallerists as of Billingham’s own intentions.
This reader traces the history of a body of work which remains as vital and provocative as on its first release, and whose story tells us much about the workings of art, publishing, and the politics of dissemination. Editor Liz Jobey charts the history in a new essay drawing on interviews with Billingham and all the primary protagonists of the work’s emergence, including Michael Collins, Julian Germain, and Paul Graham. This is followed by an extensive selection of conversations and essays from 1996 to the present day, by writers including Charlotte Cotton, Gordon Burn, Lynn Barber, and Jim Lewis. This book coincides with the release of a new edition of Ray’s a Laugh restoring Billingham’s original vision for the book. Purchase Ray’s a Laugh here.
(source: https://mackbooks.eu/products/rays-a-laugh-a-reader-br-liz-jobey-ed)
About the Author
Liz Jobey has worked as an editor and a writer on national newspapers including The Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian and the Financial Times. Between 1998 and 2009 she was deputy editor and then associate editor of Granta, where, in addition to her work as a text editor, she was also responsible for commissioning much of the visual content of the magazine. Her interest in art and photography took her into photographic publishing as an editor and writer, working initially for Scalo. Since then she has edited and contributed essays to numerous books on and involving photography. She continues to work as an editor and to write for the Financial Times.
(source: inside page of book)
About the Publisher
MACK Books are an art and photography publishing house based in London, working with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, and cultural institutions.
mackbooks.co.uk
(source: https://mackbooks.co.uk/pages/about-us)
