{"id":370,"date":"2009-03-29T14:10:38","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T21:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/03\/to_richard_billingham_with_lov\/"},"modified":"2009-03-29T14:10:38","modified_gmt":"2009-03-29T21:10:38","slug":"to_richard_billingham_with_lov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/03\/to_richard_billingham_with_lov.html","title":{"rendered":"To Richard Billingham, with love and squalor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early in the 1990s, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designboom.com\/eng\/funclub\/billingham.html\">Richard Billingham<\/a> rewrote the rules of the visual memoir, documenting his family with an appalled affection.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/assets_c\/2009\/03\/02-4333.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/assets_c\/2009\/03\/02-4333.html','popup','width=350,height=226,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/assets_c\/2009\/03\/02-thumb-350x226-4333.jpg\" alt=\"02.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt; float: left;\" width=\"350\" height=\"226\" \/><\/a><\/span>Billingham&#8217;s disreputable dad Ray has a mirror personality in Scobie from Lawrence Durrell&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Alexandria_Quartet\">The Alexandria Quartet<\/a>, first book:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Scobie is getting on for seventy and still afraid to die; his one fear is that he will awake one morning and find himself lying dead. Consequently it gives him a severe shock every morning when the water-carriers shriek under his window before dawn, waking him up. For a moment, he says, he dare not open his eyes. Keeping them fast shut (for fear that they might open on a heavenly host or the cherubims hymning) he gropes along the cake-stand beside his bed and grabs his pipe. It is always loaded from the night before and an open matchbox stands beside it. The first whiff of seaman&#8217;s plug restores both his composure and his eyesight. He breathes deeply, grateful for the reassurance. He smiles. He gloats. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>He places his wrinkled fingers to his chest and is comforted by the sound of his heart at work, maintaining a tremulous circulation in that venous system whose deficiencies (real or imaginary I do not know) are only offset by brandy in daily and all-but lethal does. He is rather proud of his heart. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Billingham went from shooting pictures of his nearest and dearest to photographing at the zoo, not a large leap. He&#8217;s in the current exhibit at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westernbridge.org\/\">Western Bridge<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early in the 1990s, Richard Billingham rewrote the rules of the visual memoir, documenting his family with an appalled affection. Billingham&#8217;s disreputable dad Ray has a mirror personality in Scobie from Lawrence Durrell&#8217;s The Alexandria Quartet, first book: Scobie is getting on for seventy and still afraid to die; his one fear is that he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}