Tony Ray-Jones

I visited Bristol to view ‘The English Seen’ exhibition of Tony Ray-Jones, at and curated by the Martin Parr Foundation. The exhibition was in its last few days, and I arrived shortly before opening time so I serendipitously also got a sneak preview of images for a forthcoming exhibition of Hans Eijkelboom’s ‘People of the 21st Century’ images, two different approaches to what is currently called ‘street photography’ – but which Ray-Jones would have just called ‘photography’.

Tony Ray-Jones (TR-J) was an English photographer, active for only a decade before his early death from leukaemia in 1972, aged 30. In that time he produced two bodies of work, viewing America in colour and England in monochrome, and influenced a generation of ‘street’ and observational documentary photographers. Martin Parr acknowledges TR-J’s influence in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, and it is possible to see a trail of influence from Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’, through TR-J’s ‘American Colour’ and ‘A Day Off’, to Parr’s ‘The Last Resort’

Ray-Jones’ period in America started with a scholarship to Yale to study graphic design, a course which included photography, and included spells as art director on various magazines. In New York he was influenced by ‘The Americans’ (published a few years previously) and by friendships with Joel Meyerowitz and Garry Winogrand, a group which experimented with street photography – particularly of parades and pageants – and discussed each others’ images. His images from this period are mainly colour transparencies, partly because (with access to processing labs but no darkroom) it was the quickest route to a viewable image (Meyerowitz, quoted in Ray-Jones and Jobey 2013) and partly because

‘I found America a very colour-conscious country. Colour is very much part of their culture, and they use it in crazy ways. You look down Madison Avenue at lunchtime and the colours just vibrate.’ (Ray-Jones quoted by Jovane)

Ray-Jones ‘people pictures’ from ‘American Colour’ have much in common with Frank’s Americans. Neither photographer goes for the obvious shot. Both focus selectively on a subject, even if small in frame and neither seems bothered about large areas of soft-focus or motion blur in the less-important parts of the image. This gives the images a feeling of energy, of being ‘in the moment’.

Ray-Jones regarded this set of American images as juvenilia, or  ‘isolated sketches’ as he put it, and would probably have returned to the US after a time in England, had his leukaemia not intervened. His return to England marked a change of image style, and brought his better-known work, the monochrome images of ‘A Day Off’ and the recent exhibition ‘The English Seen‘.

The exhibition contains many of Ray-Jones better-known images and also some new prints made from previously unprinted negatives from the Ray-Jones archive held at the National Photography Collection in Bradford (Macnair 2013).

These are images full of narrative and detail, showing mainly leisure activities: beach holidays, holiday camps, behind the scenes at beauty contests, Crufts and the Durham Miners’ Gala to take few examples. I enjoyed them partly from a sense of nostalgia and recognition (the period coincides with my early teens and the beach images particularly resonate) but also because they are reminiscent of the Giles cartoons of the period (which I regard as Giles’ ‘golden age’). Unlike the American images, most do not concentrate in individuals but show details and cameos all over the image frame, all of which are worth studying.

If I have a favourite, it is the female attendant in the left-luggage office at Wimbledon Station, slightly bored and with upturned eyes directing the viewer to the crowded concourse on the floor above.

The exhibition catalogue (Parr and Jobey 2019) contains all of the exhibited images and more, and a biographical essay by Liz Jobey.

References

Jovane, M. (s.d.) American Colour 1962-1965 [online] Available at https://www.lensculture.com/articles/tony-ray-jones-american-colour-1962-1965#slideshow [Accessed 22 December 2019].

Jovane, M. (s.d.) Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972) [online] Available at https://www.lensculture.com/articles/tony-ray-jones-tony-ray-jones-1941-1972#slideshow [Accessed 22 December 2019].

Macnair, E. (2013) An important photographic archive and an innovative collaboration [online] Available at https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/tony-ray-jones-archive-exhibition-at-media-space-in-science-museum-london [Accessed 23 December 2019].

Parr, M., and Jobey, L. (2019) Tony Ray-Jones. Bristol: RRB Photobooks.

Ray-Jones, T., and Jobey, L. (2013) American Colour 1962-1965. London: Mack.

Stone, M-L. (2019) Not so swinging: how the 60s really looked – in pictures [online] Available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/oct/15/tony-ray-jones-england-60s-swinging-in-pictures [Accessed 22 December 2019].