Ray’s a Laugh

1. Does "Ray’s a Laugh" mean "Ray'e Laugh"?

2. I know the general meaning of "image economy" which means "our contemporary economy that is based on images", but what does it mean in the following context?

Text:

Richard Billingham’s photographs of his family in the series Ray’s a Laugh, which depict his alcoholic father and overweight mother in scenes of poverty and deprivation, scenes which satisfy the viewer’s desire for an authentic realism, a bird’s-eye view on the abject otherness of this family on the margins of social acceptability. What characterises this image economy is that their subjects are presented in a ‘to-be-looked-at’ manner that satisfies the narcissistic desires of their viewers, which entail either identifying with the image as an ideal or using the objectified other as an assurance of one’s own superiority.