Billingham was born in
Birmingham and studied as a painter at
Bournville College of Art and the
University of Sunderland. He came to prominence through his candid photography of his family in
Cradley Heath, a body of work later added to and published in the acclaimed book ''Ray's A Laugh
(1996). Ray's a Laugh'' is a portrayal of the poverty and deprivation in which he grew up. However, there is such integrity in this work that Ray and Liz ultimately shine through as troubled yet deeply human and touching personalities. The critic
Julian Stallabrass describes Ray and Liz as embodiments of "what is in legend a particularly British stoicism and resilience, in the face of the tempest of modernity." Also in 1997, Billingham won the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now
Deutsche Börse Photography Prize). He was shortlisted for the 2001
Turner Prize, and others. In 1998, Billingham made his first documentary video,
Fishtank, a study of his father filmed with a handheld camera. It was commissioned by
Artangel and
Adam Curtis for
BBC Television and shown on
BBC Two in December 1998. Since 2011,
Fishtank has been part of the Artangel Collection – 25 notable films available for loan, free of charge, to publicly funded UK museums and galleries. He has also made landscape photographs at places of personal significance around the
Black Country, and more of these were commissioned in 2003 by the arts organisation
The Public, resulting in a book. In late 2006, Billingham exhibited a major new series of photographs and videos inspired by his memories of visiting
Dudley Zoo as a child. The series, entitled
Zoo, was commissioned by Birmingham-based arts organisation
Vivid and was exhibited at
Compton Verney Art Gallery in Warwickshire. A book of the work was published the following year. In the following year, he created a series of photographs of "
Constable Country", the area on the Essex / Suffolk border painted by
John Constable. These were exhibited at the Town Hall Galleries, Ipswich. Billingham's work was included in the 2007
BBC television series
The Genius of Photography, being the subject of part 3 of the "We Are Family" episode, made by
Wall to Wall Media. In 2009–2010, Billingham participated in a collective exhibition at the
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany titled:
Ich, zweifellos. Billingham wrote and directed his first feature film,
Ray & Liz, in 2018. It is a memoir of his childhood and his parents, told in three separate time frames. Wendy Ide of
The Guardian wrote: "It’s gruelling at times, but the film is extraordinary and unflinching. And remarkably, it’s made with as much love as anger." As of 2019, he lives on the Gower Peninsular in South Wales with his wife and three kids. He holds professorships at the
University of Gloucestershire and
Middlesex University. ==Publications==