Richard Billingham

To describe these photographs I would say that they  all show the true sadness of zoos and create a feeling of cruelty to animals in the zoo , in this work I can see a crocodile and a stream of the night where are Lite has hit the glass in front of the animal ,there is lots of greens and browns within this picture this make the water looks really dirty and the crocodile blending with the letter surrounding also the brown patches in the water  look unsanitary ,the way in wich the photograph has no space is not helped by the protruding leaves hanging down in to the crocodiles space.the crocodile looks lifeless submerged in Walter .

The lighting with in all his photographs in this series is bad because it is behind pains of glass so you cannot get the real focus on the animals and he could not bring in external source of light and it might harm the animals so what ever light was in with the animals he has to use only using glass when it was to dark . there is a sense of space within this photograph becouse the crocodile is on its own in a large area, altho in a large area of the crocodile still looks cramped becouse of the length of it body and the perspective of Bellingham when take ing the photograph.

The rule of thirds is used within this photograph it is shown at the head of the crocodile and that the tail of it , this gives the affected that the crocodile is the main focus of the photograph also it creates space around it so it looks like it just fits in it inclosure.

Billingham does not edit photos as he wants to have a real feel of what is actually happening, he has a specific style in which you see the raw untamed version of reality, this makes his photographs really powerful and shocking to the audience.

The element that interests me the most about these photographs is the meaning behind it becouse he wants the audience to empathise with the animal but feel guiltily about standing there and whatching an animal lay in a human made pit for the rest of its life.

Within the photograph it's clear to see that an animal is been left in the zoo, this animal is probably watch every day by different passers-by and is he to see animals, Billingham tries to capture reality within this  photograph portraying the reality behind the 90s and animals in captivity.

I have reasurched this work and this is what the gardian said about billinghams work" A Less formidable artists than Billingham would not have been able to resist making points about these images; either about cruelty or anthropomorphism. The bluntness of his composition refuses either."

This comferms my opinion that his work shows cruelty and the fact that that his work is called brutal shows that it is beyond reality and it is showing the dark side of zoos.

I think this work is relevant to my project because it shows how man and animals have a relationship that is not always nice animals in zoos get treated badly , my projected question is how is the relationship between man and animal been explored thro photography . Richard Billingham shows the darker side of the relationship of man and animal he shows how man has complete control over animals as we are a higher power and these photographs show the animals suffering and no techniques are needed within theses photographs becouse the focus of his work is reality. 

If I where to give this work are titled it would be "abandoned " I think this is appropriate becouse it shows not that people have abandoned these animals but that these animals are wild but kept in captivey and this photograph gives the feeling of being trapped in a small captive non natral place.

If I found my self within I would feel sad and trapped like the animals within the photograph,becouse it looks small cramped and it would not be nice to be trapped with an unhappy monkey .

 I would like to compare this work with the work of maniun uoborane ,This is a series of forty images of dogs looking out of car windows - sounds a bit strange but the pictures have been seen in magazines and galleries all over the world .uoborane is a professional photographer in London . These photographs of the dogs in cars are shocking and sad , these hold the same sites of curtesy and neglected as Richard Billingham's work these two are quite similar and I really like the way that one uses techniques and approach to create a shocking berry staged pice of work with external light and from different perspectives this is different to Richard Billinghams approach where he photographs what's there.

responses
 shoot 1 was to dark and i only took 6 photographs because i soon discovered it wasn't the right lighting and i felt it was to morbid but i liked the composition of some of the photographs so then i deiced to take a second shoot alter moving the cage in to a more high key lite room where i conducted shoot 2.

My Response

I created work that in a similar way to Billingham encourages viewers to think about the way we keep animals out of their natural habitat.

I tried to do this in 2 ways.

1 I photographed  my bird in the cage.

Contact sheet

I then wanted to emphasise this  through manual mainpulation and cut into the image to create a more 3 dimensionally cage structure.

2 I also replaced my bird with a picture of myself as I thought this would really encourage viewers to think about how we treat animals and what it might be like.

Contact sheet of  you doing different poses

Contact sheet of images of the cage with printed version of you in it.

 These photographs are of a bird in a cage i really believe
that they capture the same tense emotion as Billinghams
photographs of the animals in confined spaces and looking unhappy.

i really love this photograph because of the detail on the feathers of the bird and patterns within the photograph the crisscrossing of the nest and the bars that run across the photograph making it feel confined and it makes the bird look really big within the cage giving it the same feel as the animals within the zoo.

this is my favorite photograph because the bird is in focus and then everything else is out of focus this makes the audiance look at the bird more and because of the perspective you feel like the cage is really small this really captures the birds cramped life within a cage.

for this response i wanted to develop the feeling of being caged more and i decided to create a cage out of the bars in the photograph so i decided to cut them out manually and stick them together in  a 3d structure and palce the birds within this structure to make it seem like they are really clostaphobic