RICHARD BILLINGHAM Ray’s A Laugh

RICHARD BILLINGHAM Ray’s A Laugh

First published in 1996 to enormous acclaim, Richard Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh is one of the most significant photobooks of the turn of the twentieth century, as well as a cornerstone work of the Young British Artists generation. Formed of starkly intimate images of Billingham’s often chaotic parental home under the heavy effects of alcoholism and poverty, the book was produced in the 1990s with editors Michael Collins and Julian Germain. This new edition restores Billingham’s original vision for his deeply personal work for the first time. Including numerous unseen images and a distinct approach to sequencing inflected by Billingham’s training as a painter: it constitutes a ‘director’s cut’ and reintroduces a vital and consistently challenging work for a new era.

The publication of this new edition is accompanied by Ray’s a Laugh: A Reader, edited by Liz Jobey, which traces the book’s compelling history from Billingham’s ‘discovery’ at Sunderland University, through his Turner Prize nomination, to the present reworked edition.

Read The Reviews

“A landmark look at family dysfunction … from today’s vantage it looks just as bracing and uncompromising as it did when it was originally released – and perhaps even more relevant in the post-Brexit era of increasingly intractable inequality.” – The New Yorker

“[The new edition] is closer to Billingham’s original intention, even more full of complicated affection and disgust and black comedy and overwhelming anxiety about his family life. The flashlit shock of the original is preserved but is given depth and context in a series of previously unseen images.” – The Observer New Review

“To perceive its revelation as salacious is disgraceful. Ray’s a Laugh compels us to see what is not commonly seen, and that is the most we can ask of a work of art.” – The FT Weekend Magazine

“[Billingham’s] intentions have remained as enigmatic as ever.” – Le Monde

“The same stark depiction of poverty [feels] more relevant than ever.” – The Guardian

“The newly revised and sequenced version of Ray’s a Laugh adds weight to the work both figuratively and physically, massive as it is – and some sense of care and respect for the subjects that the first publication was missing.” – The British Journal of Photography

“Billingham’s lens never shied away from the bleaker side of their lives, and in doing so made Ray’s a Laugh one of the most enduring portrayals of 90s Britain.” – DAZED

“Billingham’s work challenges the viewer to look beyond the surface, finding beauty and dignity where society often chooses not to look.” – ArtReview

“In Ray’s a Laugh, the artist recounts without rhetoric and with his unmistakable intellectual irony, a social context which is much more widespread than one might think, providing the international audience with a raw but desperately tender family tale.” – Lampoon Magazine

“[This] new edition restores the initial opus by enriching it with numerous new images.” – Polka Magazine

“A series saturated with everyday life and things to forget.” – La Stampa

“The original Ray’s a Laugh didn’t help you understand his family. This version, with its sequences of Ray, with the ebb and flow of mood and space, with the melancholy and loneliness, with the longer quiet moments to offset the dysfunction, does.” – PhMuseum

Mack Books

Mack is a global publisher of award-winning books on art, photography and critical studies. Founded by Michael Mack in London 2010. They work with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, as well as cultural institutions.