Critical Review of the article Ha Ha Ha: Ray's a Laugh

Jan Estep is an artist and an associate editor of New Art Examiner.  In his article he discusses and depicts the work of Richard Billingham’s ‘Rays a Laugh’, he also talks about a film called fishtank (1996), which is in a sense a filmed version of ‘Rays a Laugh’, and lastly he makes a connection between Billingham’s later work to ‘Rays a Laugh’.

Putting the emotional tonality to one side, Estep questions the artist intent and purpose of publishing such private images.  Family secrets are usually not exploited at all; never mind in this sort of manner and I concur with Estep on questioning why would you allow the privacy of your own family to be exposed?

He talks about the familiarity of photographing ones family and friends but how awkward they could come across to Billingham as well as the viewer, they are somewhere between empathy and cruelty, love and hate, which I half agree on because I think it comes down to the individual and their family background.  I believe that it’s one or the other, not in between like Estep suggests.

With Billingham moving on to urban landscape work Estep suggests, “they feel less specific, and less driven by personality” and are overshadowed by earlier work which I believe is true but however, I think this is fairly obvious because how can there be anything as personal as family and the family home?

I believe that Estep’s article is thoroughly done, and raises lots of interesting questions about the motives of the artist and the book, however I do believe that he rambled on too much in certain areas of the article.

Reference:

Estep, J. New Art Examiner, September 1999, Vol. 27 Issue 1, p28, http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=d840dd7d-f2ed-4fdb-b944-0094e335296c%40sessionmgr112&vid=1&hid=119&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aft&AN=505827343