Richard Billingham's return of a fascinating family affair

Baby photos by proud fathers aren’t an obvious subject for a man whose reputation was made with one of the grimmest family albums in existence.

In 2000, when he was a student, Richard Billingham created a photo-documentary called Ray’s a Laugh — Ray being his father. Candid and edgy, the series was created in his family’s foetid Birmingham flat and shocked, repelled, fascinated and moved viewers.

Between then and this new show, Billingham has explored the lives of animals in zoos, and surprised us with small, elegiac, painterly landscapes and occasional cows positioned with a designer’s eye in the fields. Examples of both are scattered through this new exhibition but the focus is Billingham’s family life. The son of Ray is now the father and lives in the countryside.

His subjects are his children, wife and dog. The baby, Walter, sleeps inside a huge tracksuit top and is propped up in a massive bed, emitting a calm, Napoleonic stare. But the old Billingham tension emerges in several entertaining risk games, which seem to replicate the child-unfriendly environment which he grew up in: the baby crawling on the carpet, head-to-head with their big dog, or toddling among saucepans on the kitchen floor, trying to open the door, or being fed as the dog looks on.

The scene where Billingham’s brother holds Walter as he locks eyes with his now late grandfather, Ray, pairs with the three-year-old now standing on the lawn, staring sadly at a melting snowman, in a ridiculously different context from the claustrophobic Birmingham interiors. A typically surprising return of a remarkable original.
Until May 22 . Information: 020 7439 2201; www.anthonyreynolds.com

Richard Billingham: Recent Photographs
Anthony Reynolds Gallery
W1