Background
Tony Ray-Jones was born on June 7, 1941, in Wells, Somerset, United Kingdom. He was the youngest son of Raymond Ray-Jones (1886-1942), a painter and etcher who died when Tony was only eight months old, and Effie Irene Pearce, who would work as a physiotherapist. After his father's death, Tony's mother took the family to Tonbridge in Kent, to Little Baddow (near Chelmsford, Essex), and then to Hampstead in London.
Education
Tony Ray-Jones studied graphic design at the London School of Printing (now the London College of Communication) (1957-1961), then earned a Master of Fine Arts in 1964 from the Yale School of Art. He also studied at the Design Laboratory in New York City (1962-1963).
Career
In 1963 Tony Ray-Jones was given assignments for the magazines' Car and Driver and Saturday Evening Post. He worked as associate art director to Alexey Brodovitch. Brodovitch's gruff manner and high standards won respect and hard work from Ray-Jones and others. He graduated from Yale in 1964 and photographed the United States energetically until his departure for Britain in late 1965. From then until 1970, Tony Ray-Jones lived and worked at 102 Gloucester Place, Marylebone.
On his return to Britain, Tony Ray-Jones was shocked at the lack of interest in non-commercial photography, let alone in the publication of books presenting it. He was also unsure of what subject he might pursue, but the idea of a survey of the English at leisure gradually took shape. He began work on that, at the same time doing portrait and other work for the Radio Times, Sunday newspapers, and magazines.
In 1969, Architectural Review magazine commissioned photojournalists for eight themed issues called Manplan, examining the contemporary state of architecture and town planning. The photos were published between September 1969 and September 1970. Tony Ray-Jones's work documenting people living on housing estates in Britain was published in an issue on housing in 1970, and was included in his second unsuccessful submission to join Magnum Photos.
Tony Ray-Jones returned to the United States in January 1971 to work as a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute - one of the few ways in which he could legally stay in the US. He disliked teaching, finding the students self-centered and lazy, but he was soon able to busy himself working on assignments for both the British and the US press.
In late 1971, Tony Ray-Jones started to suffer from exhaustion. Early the next year leukemia was diagnosed, and he started chemotherapy. Medical treatment in the US was too expensive, so Ray-Jones flew to London on 10 March and immediately entered the Royal Marsden Hospital; he died there on 13 March.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "Ray-Jones was in many ways a social anthropologist with a camera, but it is his eye for detail and often brilliantly complex compositions that sets him apart. His images often appear cluttered ... On closer inspection, though, what we are glimpsing is several small narratives contained in the bigger defining one."
Ainslee Ellis in A Day Off wrote: "It is difficult to think of any other British photographer but Tony Ray-Jones whose pictures have that rare blend of humor and sadness which is born of both compassion and irony. This is something that springs from the depths of character and it is something that cannot be copied or faked. The imitation, the phony-baloney version of the mixture, as Tony would say, is a blend of sentiment and sarcasm, and is totally alien to his work and to his nature."