Output details

Landscape, Photographs 2001- 2003

This publication – Richard Billingham Landscapes – represented, in book form, the result of my photographic investigation into varieties of landscape across Europe, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Specifically selected from an ongoing project, the images signalled new thematic interests and subject matter. My previous practice was based on my own family and the industrial region in the Midlands in which I grew up utilizing 35mm cameras that allowed for a spontaneous response to the subject. The landscapes, however, were produced using a medium format camera to force a new kind of attention onto the subject.

The publication comprised nearly 50 photographs and was the first time these images were compiled into a cohesive sequence (some were previously exhibited at venues in isolation or in small groups). Primarily concerned with picture making, this book provided new insights into my working method available to an audience other than a gallery going public.

The work represents an intuitive response to the landscape informed by a love and respect for nature and an appreciation of landscape painting, often employing the tropes of landscape painting as opposed to landscape photography, echoing 18th Century ideas of the sublime.

The focus of interest is often on the quality of light, on atmospheric effects and how these conditions transform the formal aspects of landscape. There is a concern with order, structure and texture of landscape, with spatial arrangement, colour and the play between depth and flatness. Any human presence is marked by traces, suggested rather than made explicit.

The output is presented via portfolio, which should be viewed in order to gain a proper understanding of the research.