Richard Billingham & Tom Hicks

In Conversation

This Saturday 16th November 2024 saw an event at the University Of Wolverhampton’s George Wallis building. I’ve been looking forward to it since I booked a ticket on Eventbrite a number of weeks ago. The event was a conversation between Richard Billingham and Tom Hicks, to be held in the lecture theatre in the School Of Art building near the Molineux stadium.

Richard Billingham is a photographer, best known for his book in the 1990s “Ray’s A Laugh” which documented his family struggles with alcoholism and poverty in the Old Hill region of Cradley Heath.

Tom Hicks is a photographer and artist as well as a librarian at he university with a huge breadth of knowledge of all subjects. He is well known in the West Midlands and UK wide for his project “Black Country Type” in which he cycles around the Black Country making images of buildings, signs, and other every day sights.

I arrived in the car in Wolverhampton at around 11, with an hour to spare so I grabbed by mirrorless camera and went for a stroll around the perimeter of the Banks’s Brewery, a spiritual home for my father who grew up drinking Banks’s Bitter in the Belvidere pub in Shrewsbury. I am aware that there is talk of the brewery bein gclosed by it’s owners after being in action since 1875 on the site. I wanted to capture some scenes showing where it is and what it looks like today before it too becomes, what is later referred to as, a non-space.

I walked all around and found the logos fascinating on the buildings and the colours and order of the barrels stacked on the pallets around the site. It would be great to get a trip around the brewery at some point too. (Edit: I’ve just sent a cheeky email off to see if we can get a tour around the brewery, watch this space)

It Begins

After returning to the University it was time to make my way to the lecture theatre.

Introduced by Dr Rob Francis guests on stage at the beginning were Anthony Cartwright from Zer0 Books and Tom Hicks. Rob explained that the conversation was to gather some insight and information as to the “Identity and Place” of the Black Country. It would provide some contents for the book compiled by Rob and Anthony and to be published by Zer0 books.

Once the clock had ticked past the 12:00 start time, they got underway, first by telling the packed lecture theatre that Richard Billingham had not made it yet, owing to struggles on the railway network. He would join us as soon as he could but for now Tom would take to the stage and kick off proceedings.

Vinyl and Metal

Tom stood up and kicked off with an opening slide showing the cover of New Order’s 1986 fourth studio album, Brotherhood.

He explained that this was one of his albums when he was younger and he was intrigued by how an album sleeve no longer needed the photo of the band on the front with their instruments in hand. In fact, this cover features nothing but a photo of a piece of titanium-zinc alloy metal including it’s manufacturers stamp showing its manufacturing information, much like a batch number. Weirdly I’d only recently found out that New Order single Blue Monday had a code in coloured blocks on the sleeve so it was interesting to know that many people think about these things. The covers were designed by Peter Saville who worked for Factory Records and was instrumental (excuse the pun) in the creation of many of the album covers for New Order, Joy Division, Roxy Music, OMD, King Crimson and Peter Gabriel.

Tom said that if a photo like this could represent an album then what else could a photo represent and how can they be used, sparking a lifelong interest in photography.

Intro To Billingham

Tom, in Richard’s absence, went into Bilingham’s work overview. Touching on the book Ray’s A Laugh, Black Country and then the film Ray & Liz. Tom, Rob and Anthony reflected on Billingham’s works showing the interior of the tower block home where he first made his collection of family based photos that got him noticed by his art teacher, and a diversion from fine art to photography followed. There was a chat about the views out of the tower block window which looked over the top of Cradley Heath towards Birmingham City and all around the region, yet Billingham was trapped behind the pane of glass with no real ability to get up in the scenery that he could see. After the internal works of his family in their home Billingham walked around the local neighbourhood making images of what Hicks described as “Edgelands” or “Non-Spaces”, wastelands where the buildings were derelict and demolished leaving nothing but piles of rubble and open areas awaiting development still. This book was published in 2009 and featured a lot of night time photography and unlike his previous work featured few humans but showed the presence of humans and the effects of people being around.

Hicks’ Influences

Going on to his influences, Hicks brought up some slides and showed us some work from some artists that I was familiar with and others that I was not.

Berndt and Hilda Becher and their typologies of industrial structures such as mine heads, water towers etc.

Herbert Spencer and Typographica Magazine which Hicks explained was like the Pinterest of its day. If you wanted to know more about typefaces then this was where you looked for inspiration and information.

William Eggleston and his work Democratic Forest, based in the US and showing photos of everyday scenes with less of a landscape look and more of a detail and abstract look.

George Shaw and his work Ash Wednesday showing many different paintings of trees in the landscape, which I think look like photographs showing that the ordinary everyday can make interesting images.

John Myers who also helped Tom with his book design and wrote the foreword for the Black Country Type book. Myers was responsible for a production of work called Middle England that includes Boring Photos of garages, houses and all manner of normal scenery of suburbia and council estates.

Lewis Baltz who worked on New Topographies, a collection of housing, industrial estates and other general scenes around his locale. Tom recognised that the works here included boring buildings with the impact of humans being present. Much the same as many of his own works.

Now Arriving On Platform 2

Richard Billingham then arrived in plenty of time, to a round of applause, and once Tom Hicks was finished with his own influences he passed it over to Billingham.

Memories of Childhood

Richard began by explaining his work in the house that led to the career he now has today taking off. He explained that his mum didn’t work and there were no books in the house, only the TV which was on at all times, almost like a radio in the background, but it was on without fail. He explained the process of renting it from Radio Rentals and having it taken away when his mum didn’t pay the rental bills. He also described that there were works of art on the walls of his apartment in the tower block, not originals obviously but reproductions of Constable’s Haywain and all those images that are often stereotyped as being in Del Boy’s flat. My Mum and Dad had a Blue Boy and the Crying Boy along with a repro of an image that I saw the original of in Birmingham Gallery & Museum a couple of years ago.

I already saw many parallels in Billingham’s life growing up with an alcoholic father in an unkempt house and the fact that they also had the same “art” on the walls was another thing that tickled me too.

Billingham found his “Life Support Machine” in the building known as Old Hill Library where he spent many days reading books and gathering as much knowledge as he could. A lot of the knowledge he picked up from the books and info on art would later be reflected in his photography such as a particular photo of his mum lying on the sofa with her arms behind her head, that was reminiscent of Francisco Goya’s paintings La maja vestida and La maja desnuda.

From his 1996 book Ray’s a laugh, which was a portrait of the internal intimate space of the house he moved onto the book Black Country in 2007 before a movie called Ray & Liz in 2018.

His book of day and night time photos around his old neighbourhood was a method to experience Solastalgia. His photos were of “intimate spaces with no people” but appear as “tense and sensitive images”

Billingham described his feelings of sadness that parts of his life are being erased from history and that’s why it’s important to capture these views when possible. This is much the same as my view on capturing images of places that are about to be torn down or are in the process of being demolished and replaced.

Talk Is Definitely Not Cheap

With this it was time for the three chairs on stage to be filled and a conversation about the Identity and Place of the Black Country to be discussed. Rob Francis posed the questions and poked and prodded Hicks and Billingham to get their views and ideas on what being part of the Black Country actually is.

Billingham discussed and the others agreed that the citizens of the Black Country are an understated and self-deprecating group. They are like a person who is highly skilled but doesn’t shout it and acts with a sense of humbleness that belies their true ability.

It was discussed that in many of the photos shared by Billingham and Hicks that there is a narrative around the image. What was happening before and what happened straight after the shot was captured. It’s part of a story about the region.

Billingham noted that his photography was “going around noticing stuff that other people don’t notice”

When the question of identity and place was mentioned again, Billingham brought up that the Black Country had its own “food, humour, method of storytelling,the language, and even how Ozzy Osbourne retained his true Black Countryness even after moving to Los Angeles and being filmed in the reality TV show “The Osbournes”.

Billingham mentioned that the story of the Black Country was that of a region and people that “stayed the same but still seemed to change simultaneously.”

Finally, before the time was up and a couple of questions were asked by members of the audience, Billingham mentioned that he’d been to University in Sunderland and it made him apreciate where he was originally from and that he loved to come home as often as he could to see how the regions was holding up.

I think Tom Hicks mentioned that Wolverhampton was mentioned in the last line or two of the Beatles’ movie Hard Day’s Night. I’ve just looked and it does mention that they were off to do a midnight matinee performance in Wolverhampton. I did look it up and they played in the Gaumont Theatre which is no longer there, on the 14th March 1963. The movie was released the following year.

After the questions and loose ends were tied up it was time to leave so I had a quick chat with a couple of people before saying thanks to Richard and Tom as well as the team who helped organise the whole event.

After leaving the university I went for a quick walk around town and snapped a few street photos of the preparation for switching on the Christmas lights. It was tipping it down with rain so I didn’t stay outside for long. I also visited the Eagle Works celebration in the unit within the Mander Centre and had a lovely chat about art and inspirations with Susan Brisco, one of the Eagle Works studio holders. I could not stay though for the open studios event between 4 and 6 pm but I’m certain it will have been a great success.

Conclusion

Is the Black Country a place or an identity? I think it’s both and more. I did listen to a lot of the conversation about how unique the region is and think that some of it also related to areas of Shropshire such as Ironbridge and Shrewsbury. Where the Industrial Revolution was born and in particular the Flaxmill which is the world’s first iron framed building and the forerunner to all modern skyscrapers. Some of the cooky ways that Black Country folk behave are also similar to the locals around my home town. I wonder then if many regions consider themselves to be unique and inimitable in the same way?

Dilapidation and wastelands are not unique to the Black Country (BC) but I wonder if the BC people treat them differently to every other part of the country. There is definitely a part of identity that “Yam Yams” have and one can instantly tell an accent or local dialect when abroad or in a different location.

There is also the constant disagreement over where the region begins and ends, with some dwellers saying they inhabit the BC whilst others would argue that their neighbours are close but are outside the BC region. Ha ha, it’s a minefield.

Does Billingham’s photography have a unique viewpoint as it is part of the Black Country? Are there other photographers who like Paul Trevor capture the essence of the part of the country they inhabit? Tish Murtha and Craig Easton both captured interiors with members of their family and friends being immortalised in film from the same time in the 1990s.

If I’d had a camera growing up in Shrewsbury, many of the interior shots of my house would have resembled those captured by the above mentioned photographers, although somewhat less skillfully.

It is interesting to see the people categorising themselves as Black Country and examining their experiences as being distinct to the region.

The photography of both Billingham and Hicks though is excellent, their captures of banality and everyday life, in differing ways, will be a historical document in two decades time and will be studied by the residents and students of the area to check out what life was like back then in the early 21st century.

The book Transformer by Zer0 books will definitely be worth a look once it is published so I’ll have to check it out.

It was also very kind of the two artists and the other people who made it possible for us to attend the event and make the most of sitting in a room with these two influential photographers and artists.