Tony Ray-Jones

Tony Ray-Jones was born in 1941, the youngest son of the well known British painter and etcher Ray Ray-Jones. He studied graphics and photography in London, before moving to the USA to study at Yale and with Alexey Brodovitch and Richard Avedon. He became a photographer, working for magazines and in advertising. In 1968 he returned to the UK for five years, working between commercial assignments and a major project about how the English spent their leisure time. He was the first photographer to...See more

Tony Ray-Jones was born in 1941, the youngest son of the well known British painter and etcher Ray Ray-Jones. He studied graphics and photography in London, before moving to the USA to study at Yale and with Alexey Brodovitch and Richard Avedon. He became a photographer, working for magazines and in advertising. In 1968 he returned to the UK for five years, working between commercial assignments and a major project about how the English spent their leisure time. He was the first photographer to be awarded a touring show by the British Institute of Contemporary Arts. In 1971 he took a job at the San Francisco Art Institute, though he continued to work for the London Sunday Times, but died in 1972 a few weeks after being diagnosed with leukaemia. Although his tragic death cut short a career that had barely begun, he left an important legacy to British photography; he created one of the finest bodies of documentary art on the subject of England, published posthumously as A Day Off. And he acted as a bridge between Britain and America, bringing the ideas and approaches of the flourishing New York scene back to England with him. An artist of great influence among his peers and a new generation of photographers, he played a central role in building a new culture of photography among the British. See less