Artist using photography, who grew up in Sunderland, County Durham, where he gained an honours degree in fine art at the University, 1991–4. He won the Prestige Photography Prize at the University, 1994; Felix H Man Memorial Prize, 1995; and The Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize, 1997. Group shows included Who’s Looking at the Family?, Barbican Art Gallery, 1994; New Photography 12, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1996; and the Saatchi Collection-related exhibition Sensation, at the RA, 1997. In that, Billingham recorded the grim squalor of his family’s home life in the northeast. “British art has never been as scarily honest,” commented critic Waldemar Januszczak. Solo exhibitions included Anthony Reynolds Gallery, the National Museum of Film and Photography, Bradford, and Portfolio Gallery, Edinburgh, all 1996; and a series in America, France and Italy in 1997.