Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Bill Ray: My LIFE in Photography exhibit extended to February 8



Hells Angels, Blackboard Cafe, 1965
Bill Ray: Hells Angels, Blackboard Cafe, 1965 ©Time Inc.

The wonderful The Eye of Photography, a daily magazine of photography, has today published a feature on the Bill Ray exhibition My LIFE in Photography. The full feature may be seen here.

We've had a tremendous response to the exhibit and as a result are pleased to announce the exhibit has been extended through February 8, 2015. We will also feature several of Bill Ray's photographs during the photo la fair in Los Angeles, January 15 - 18, in booth #203, Monroe Gallery of Photography.

View the exhibit on-line here.

Related articles: Those were the days: Bill Ray's photos capture the spirit of an age
                           LIFE’s Moments: Monroe Gallery celebrates the work of Bill Ray

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Iconic photographer Joe McNally presented with the 2015 Professional Photographer Award.





Woodbury, NY—

The PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA) announced that Go Miyazaki , president and CEO of Fujifilm North America Corporation, will be receiving the 2014 Person of the Year Award at PMDA’s annual dinner on January 5, 2015 in Las Vegas. The distinguished award is being given to Miyazaki in recognition of his leadership of Fujifilm’s success in North America in both the output and capture sides of the imaging business.

Four additional awards will be accorded at the 4th Annual Imaging Night: Wataru Otani , head of New Business Development at Ricoh Imaging, will receive the Herbert Keppler Technical Achievement Award; John Clouse , former senior vice president of Sales for Nikon Inc., will be given the Norman C. Lipton Lifetime Achievement Award; Gabrielle Mullinax , president of Fullerton Photographics and a leader in creative photo printing and archiving, will receive the Visionary Award; and iconic photographer Joe McNally will be presented with the 2015 Professional Photographer Award.

"We’re pleased to be able to recognize these individuals for their accomplishments in the field of digital imaging,” said Dan Unger , president of PMDA. “Our event will once again shine the light on the many accomplishments and innovations that have kept the digital imaging business in the forefront of the consumer electronics revolution. And this year, we are celebrating both the capture and output sides of our business, which are both showing resurgences among consumers. It will certainly be a must-attend night.”

The awards will be presented at the 49th Annual PMDA Awards Dinner, which will take place on Monday, January 5, 2015 at XS Nightclub at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas, on the eve of the International CES. The evening will include musical entertainment and a gallery of Joe McNally’s award-winning photography. PMDA has been recognizing individual contributions to the imaging industry since 1965. pmda.comOpens in a new window.


Joe McNally's photographs will be on exhibit during Photo LA 2015 January  15 - 18 at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #203.


Related exhibition: Joe McNally, Photojournalist

Thursday, January 1, 2015

PHOTO LA 2015




Winter has set in to Santa Fe, and we are looking forward to heading west and exhibiting again at this year's edition of photo la, January 15 - 19, 2015. Monroe Gallery of Photography will be in Booth #203, just to the right of the main entrance to the fair.

To mark the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the Selma March, the gallery will showcase a very special selection of photographs from the 1965 March, alongside other iconic images from the civil rights era. We will be also exhibiting a wide variety of important photojournalism; including Stephen Wilkes iconic photograph of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Aditionally, we will show several of Wilkes acclaimed Day To Night collection; alongside many other classic photographs.

Be sure to attend the Photojournalism and Its Role in the Fine Art World panel discussion Sunday, Jan. 19, 11:30 - 1.



About photo la: The international photographic art exposition photo la returns for its 24th year at The REEF, located in the historic LA Mart building in downtown Los Angeles, January 15 - 18, 2015. Downtown LA has become an international destination for art patrons and enthusiasts. In addition to photo la and the LA Art Show, downtown LA will also welcome the highly anticipated opening of the new Broad Museum in 2015, along with the ongoing arrival of new cutting-edge and blue-chip galleries, such as Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. Inspired by downtown's growing vitality and creative energy, photo la relocated to The REEF for its 2014 edition, attracting an unprecedented attendance of 16,000 guests.

The 2015 edition of photo la will expand its uniquely diverse and far-reaching showcase of photographic art, ranging from 19th Century works to contemporary and innovative photography-based art. Alongside galleries, dealers, museums, and nonprofit organizations, photo la will also expand its acclaimed programming to include more lectures, roundtable discussions, special installations, and docent tours with distinguished members of the photographic/arts community. This year, photo la is pleased to honor Catherine Opie, and the fair's exclusive VIP opening gala will celebrate her lifelong contributions to the arts. Additionally, all proceeds from the opening gala will go towards photo la's 2015 beneficiary “ The United Way of Greater Los Angeles and The Painted Brain.

Buy Tickets

Concurrent events

Classic Photographs Los Angeles

The LA Art Show

Related: "I’m also glad Monroe Gallery of Photography (Booth #203) is returning this year."




Wednesday, December 31, 2014

IT BEGINS: THE "BEST OF" PHOTOGRAPHY LISTS FOR 2014


 The lists began almost a month before the end of the year: everyone's photography "Best of" lists for 2014. As 2014 comes to a close, below is our compilation of what the web selected as the "best" of 2014.


Slate: 2014 Photos of the Year

This week: The year's best photojournalism

Albuquerque Journal: Photos of the Year 2014: New Mexico's Year in Pictures

Slideshow: Roll Call’s 2014 Feature Photos of the Year

VII: Year in Review

AP: Best US News Photos of 2014

The Guardian: Best photographs of 2014 – in pictures

WhiteHouse.gov: 2014: A Year in Pictures

The Best of LensCulture in 2014

The Huffington Post: The 52 Best Photographs From Around The World In 2014

WIRED’s Best Photo Stories of the Year​

The Boston Globe Big Picture: Best of 2014

TIME: The Most Uplifting Photos of 2014

TIME: In Memoriam: Remembering the Photographers We Lost in 2014

Chicago Tribune's 2014 Photos of the Year

Chicago Sun Times 2014: International Year in Photos

TIME: As 2014 draws to a close, we take a look back at the photographic trends that defined 2014

BBC: Pictures of the Year

The Guardian:  Mike Bowers' best photographs of 2014 – in pictures

The Guardian: Photographer of the year 2014: Bulent Kilic – in pictures

The Guardian: The 20 photographs of the year

NY Times Lens: Choosing the 2014 Pictures of the Year

London Evening Standard: Pictures of the Year 2014

Best of 2014: A look back at the top New York Daily News Photos of the Year

BBC: Ten photos capture the UK in 2014

LA Times: A Year in Focus: 2014

American Photo: Photojournalism of the Year: 2014

VICE: Our Favorite Photos of 2014

POLITICO photos of the year

POLITICO: The 10 Best Washington Photos of 2014

AOL: 2014: The Year in Photos

US News and World Report: 2014 Photos of the Year: Part 1
                                               2014 Photos of the Year: Part 2

BagNews: Looking Back on ‘14 With Compassion and Depth

Internazionale: Le foto dell’anno

Stella Kramer: The Best of 2014

Slate: Our Seven Favorite Photography Shows From 2014

Slate: The Five Best Photo Series You Might Have Missed This Year

The Guardian: Best portraits of 2014 – in pictures

The New York Times: The Year in Pictures, 2014

The Telegraph: Pictures of the year 2014: World news- part 1
                                                             World news- part 2
                                                             World news - Part 3
                                                             World news - part 4

TIME Picks the Best Wire Photographer of 2014

ABC News: The Year in Pictures

Doctors Without Borders: The Year in Pictures 2014

Business Insider Australia: The 50 Most Unforgettable Photos Of 2014

Bag News Notes: Furry Friends Meet Cheap Clicks. (Or, the Rabid Proliferation of Year End Photo Lists.)

The Guardian: Animals photographs of the year 2014

Best of The Washington Post photography 2014

The Guardian: 2014 Wildlife photography awards round-up – in pictures

TIME Picks the Top 100 Photos of 2014

Photo District News: The Best of 2014: PDN Photo of the Day

Mashable: The best photos of 2014

 The New Yorker: Favorite Portraits of 2014

Chicago Tribune: 2014: The year in A&E photography

NBC News: The Year in Pictures 2014

The Independent: Pictures of the year: World News 2014

The Boston Globe: The best photos of 2014, Part 1 - The Big Picture
                                Part II

Baltimore Sun: 2014: The year in pictures

Baltimore Sun: The world's strangest pictures of the year

The Guardian: Sean O’Hagan’s top 10 photography exhibitions of 2014

NY Magazine: The Cut’s Wildest, Most Vibrant Photographs of the Year

TIME: The Most Powerful Protest Photos of 2014

TIME: The Most Surprising Photos of 2014

TIME's Best Portraits of 2014

Wall Street Journal: Photos of the Year 2014

Weather.com's Top 100 Photos of 2014

WNYC: Protest Photos Are the Best Art of 2014

Getty:  Year in Focus | Reportage highlights from 2014

Getty:  A selection of our Reportage photographers’ key work either shot or first released in 2014

European PressPhoto Agency: Best photos of 2014

CNN 2014: The Year in Pictures

TIME’s Best Photojournalism of 2014

TIME Picks the Top 10 Photos of 2014

Daily Mail: some of the most amazing photographs of 2014 from around the world

The Atlantic: 2014: The Year in Photos, January - April
                                The Year in Photos, May-August
                                The Year in Photos September - December

Associated Press: AP Photos of the year

San Francisco Business Times best photos 2014

IBn: Pictures of the year 2014: The Best Photos from around the world

Francetv.info: Les conflits de l’annĂ©e 2014 vus par les photographes de l’AFP

The Province: A roundup of some of the top shots by Canadian Press photographers based in B.C. this year

Outside Magazine: The Best Adventure Photography: Exposure 2014

Outside Magazine: Best National Park Photos

The Guardian: Travel photographer of the year 2014 winners – in pictures

Toronto Sun: Reuters shows off their best animal pictures of 2014

Vogue.com’s Best Wedding Photos from 2014

Gizmodo: The Alien and Eerie Beauty of the Year's Best Microscopic Photos

The Guardian: Travel photographer of the year 2014 winners – in pictures

Booooooom: A Selection Of My Favourite Images Found In 2014: 75 Photos By 75 Photographers

New.com.au: The most incredible satellite images of 2014

National Geographic: Best Space Pictures of 2014

BBC News: The most stunning drone pictures of 2014

The Guardian: Photographer of the year – 2014 shortlist: child wrestlers, uprisings and performing poodles

Metro: Pictures: The Art of Building 2014 photographer of the year finalists

Reuters: Best photos of the year 2014

The Indian Express: Best photographs from around the world of 2014

The Guardian: The Royal Horticultural Society’s Photographer of the Year competition winner and runners up

TIME: 50 Astonishing Animal Photographs of 2014

Tucson.com: Photos: Associated Press best photos of 2014

British Journalism Awards: Photojournalist of the Year

International Business Times: Rueters Photographers Discuss the Best News Photos of 2014

Agence France Presse releases best pictures of 2014

Colin Pantall's Blog: Best Photo Books, Blogs and Hats of 2014

Mashable: The Best drone pictures of 2014

World Press Photo: View the entire collection of winning images from the 57th World Press Photo Contest

Conscientious Portfolio Competition 2014: The Winners

POP Photographer: Your Best Shot Finalists: November 2014


National Geographic: Stunning Pictures: The Year's Best Wildlife Photographs

i09: Nature's Candids: The Best Wildlife Camera-Trap Photography Of 2014

TIME: Matt Black Is TIME’s Pick for Instagram Photographer of the Year 2014

2014 Winners - iPhone Photography Awards

Radio.com:  14 Best Instagram Photos Of 2014

POP Photo: See the Most Instagrammed Places of 2014

PerezHilton.com: The Numbers Are In — The Top 3 Most Liked Photos On Instagram Of 2014 Are…

Daily Mail: Most popular Instagram image in 2014 was Kim Kardashian’s wedding

Wall Street Journal: The 5 Biggest Social Media Movements of 2014

NJ.com: Best N.J. prom photos of 2014

British Journal of Photography:  The Cool and Noteworthy issue: showcase of the people and projects that caught our attention this year

Photography Books

FlakPhoto Books of the Year 2014

Mother Jones: The 19 Best Photobooks of 2014

The Telegraph: Cheryl Newman on the photography books that caught her eye

Conscientious: My favourite photobooks in 2014

Elizabeth Avedon: BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS of 2014....and Some Honorable Mentions

The Independent: Books of the year 2014: The best photography books

FlakPhoto Books of the Year 2014

Blake Andrews: The Year in Photo Books

EMAHO Picks The Most Interesting Photobooks of 2014

Mother Nature Network: Best books of 2014 in conservation photography

L'Oeil de la Photographie: Special Books

PhotoEye: The Best Books of 2014

American Photo: Best Photobooks of the Year 2014

pdn: Notable Photo Books of 2014: Part I

The Guardian: The best photography books of 2014

a-n: Top ten: the best photo books of 2014

jmcolberg on Ello: Listmas: those final four to six weeks of the year, where it's all about being bombarded with "best of" lists

TIME selects the best photobooks of 2014

 Wall Street Journal: The Six Best Photography Books

The Telegraph: Christmas Books 2014: best photography and art books to read

Huffington Post: 15 Great Photography Books For Under $15

Cameras, etc

Google: Year in Search

USA Today: The Best Photo Apps of 2014

The Phoblographer's Best Useful Photography Tips for 2014

American Photo: Editors' Choice: Gear of the Year 2014

POP Photo: Camera of the Year: Nikon D750

Imaging Resource: The best camera under 1,000 dollars: Best compact camera

C-Net: Best digital cameras of 2014

The Phoblographer’s Editor’s Choice Awards list for 2014. Here you’ll find the best cameras, the best lenses, the best lights, the best camera bags and a whole lot more

PDN's 30 2014 : New and Emerging Photographers to Watch


And a truly tragic list:

Committee To Protect Journalists: Slideshow: Journalists killed in 2014



Remember when? Recap:  2013 Year in Pictures and the..."Best of " Everything Photographic 2013




 

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Steve Schapiro: "The Long Road"

On the Road, the Selma March, 1965
© Steve Schapiro


The New Yorker has a portfolio of unpublished photographs from the 1965 Selma March by Steve Schapiro.


"A half century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, in Oslo, spoke of the “creative battle” that twenty-two million black men and women in the United States were waging against “the starless midnight of racism.” A few months later, in March, 1965, that battle came to Selma, Alabama, the birthplace of the White Citizens’ Council. The issue was voting rights. As King pointed out, there were more blacks in jail in the city than there were on the voting rolls. James Baldwin, who was among the marchers, had written, “I could not suppress the thought that this earth had acquired its color from the blood that had dripped down from these trees.” The series of marches there––the first was Bloody Sunday, a bloody encounter with a racist police force armed with bullwhips and cattle prods; the last, the fifty-four-mile procession from Selma to the State House, in Montgomery––pushed Lyndon Johnson to send voting-rights legislation to Congress. The nonviolent discipline of the marchers, the subject of a new film by Ava DuVernay, and portrayed here in Steve Schapiro’s photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, became such a resonant chapter in the black freedom struggle that Barack Obama, in 2007, went to Selma to speak, at Brown Chapel, just weeks after declaring for the Presidency. Almost eight years later, as Selma is being commemorated, demonstrators against racial injustice are employing as a despairing slogan the last words of Eric Garner, an African-American man on Staten Island in the grip of a police choke hold: “I can’t breathe.”"




Wednesday, December 10, 2014

December 10: Human Rights Day



The UN General Assembly proclaimed 10 December as Human Rights Day in 1950, to bring to the attention ‘of the peoples of the world’ the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.


Via The Guardian:
Today is Human Rights Day and the press freedom watchdog, the International Press Institute (IPI), is marking it with a message and a short film, called My Voice.
It features the award-winning humanitarian photojournalist Giles Duley who explains his work in documenting post-conflict communities, to portray what he calls “the legacy of war.”


Related Exhibition: People Get Ready: The Struggle for Human Rights

Friday, November 28, 2014

Those were the days: Bill Ray's photos capture the spirit of an age


Via Pasatiempo
The Santa Fe New Mixican's Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment, & Culture
by Paul Weideman


Marilyn Monroe Singing
Bill Ray: Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy, May, 1962
 
The scene was President Kennedy’s forty-fifth birthday bash at Madison Square Garden, and Life photographer Bill Ray wanted to find a unique angle. He surreptitiously broke away from the police-cordoned press pod and climbed up above the stage. When Marilyn Monroe walked into the spotlight to sing her now-famous rendition of “Happy Birthday,” Ray had a perspective nobody else got, above and behind the sparkly dressed star. It was just one of hundreds of singular images made by the photographer, a sampling of which opens in a newly curated exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography on Friday, Nov. 28.


Ray was born in Shelby, Nebraska, in 1936, a few months before the first copy of Life magazine hit the stands. He started as a staff photographer at the Lincoln Journal Star the day after graduating from high school. At seventeen, he photographed President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon, who were visiting Nebraska. During that time, he had the opportunity to meet Gen. Curtis LeMay. It was a foreshadowing of a career full of celebrity encounters.

He went on to work for United Press International in Chicago and for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune.Then, in 1957, he turned down a job with National Geographic to begin freelancing for Life. He was soon a staffer working out of the magazine’s New York, Beverly Hills, and Paris bureaus. In his 2007 photo-filled biography, My Life in Photography, Ray says it could also have been titled “My Life With Marlys,” after the woman he met in 1956 and married in 1958. She has been an invaluable assistant — and his agent, ever since Life folded in 1972.

The many subjects in Ray’s portfolio include a newly enlisted Elvis Presley about to board a troopship bound for Germany; John and Jackie Kennedy in the early 1960s, and Jackie and Aristotle Onassis later that decade; a stunning close-up of actress Natalie Wood; a fierce Muhammad Ali in the ring; George Harrison and Bob Dylan singing at the Concert for Bangladesh; baseball star Roger Maris at bat; Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate strolling along a London street; a series on Ronald Reagan and his family; and candids of artist Isamu Noguchi and cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. Ray also did two Army tours as a photographer in Vietnam.
 
After Life ceased publication, he freelanced for Newsweek, Archaeology, Smithsonian, and Fortune, and developed a portrait specialty. “One thing I’m still good at is people,” said Ray, whose recent work includes an official portrait of “a retiring big-time minister at St. Bart’s here in New York. His predecessors had all been painted in oil, and he wanted a photograph instead.”
 
Pasatiempo: Early on, your mother supported your desire to be a photographer, isn’t that right?
 
Bill Ray: She did. She was quite a character. Both my parents were just perfect. I had a terrific childhood. My mom was very busy with her art and loved the idea of my pursuing something like that. We were not by any means wealthy, but she always found money if I needed a camera.
 
Pasa: Your main role model was Alfred Eisenstaedt. Why him?
 
Ray: It was just from reading Life magazine and having a passion about photography. I loved growing up as a kid in a tiny little town, but as I got older it was clear that I wanted to get the hell out of there. My dad would have given me the lumberyard he owned, but I didn’t want to sell two-by-fours. I had a passion about going to New York and Life magazine. Fred Astaire was from Omaha, and when I saw him dance [in a movie] with Cyd Charisse in Central Park, that was it: I’m going.
Pasa: A lot of what you did were sort of Johnny-on-the-spot news assignments covering things like a Muhammad Ali fight or Nikita Khrushchev visiting a farm in Iowa.
 
Ray: That’s right, but I also originated a few ideas. For example, in 1959, there was a little story in the paper — every morning when I got up, I’d grab The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, the Daily News, the [Daily] Mirror, and whatever else I could get my hands on — and there was a little story about a bunch of people in Detroit who were going to Alaska to homestead. I rushed over and showed the picture editor the story, and he said, “Go ahead, go.” I was very enthusiastic and worked very hard on every assignment. You have to be intense and keep going. That’s the only way to keep the assignments coming.
 
Pasa: It was pretty competitive?
 
Ray: Oh, god, at Life magazine, yeah. Everybody in the world wanted to work there.
 
Pasa: You used many different kinds of cameras. To shoot Andy Warhol, you had a giant Polaroid camera, and on the other end of the spectrum there’s a picture in the book of you at age eleven, concentrating on the viewfinder of a Speed Graphic.
 
Ray: That’s when I belonged to the Omaha Camera Club. The tiny village I grew up in was 90 miles away, so we’d go into Omaha once a week. It’s there that I met my mentor, who was a brilliant commercial photographer. He really got me on the right road to how photography technically works. The Speed Graphic was the basic tool at the newspaper I started working at when I turned seventeen in May 1953. I had a Leica and a Rolleiflex and a Linhof, but you really had to use the 4 x 5 [medium-format camera] to make the deadlines.
 
Pasa: I would think the bigger camera with the film holders was slower than a 35-millimeter camera.
 
Ray: But for most assignments, you shoot just one or two holders [two shots in each holder], and you come rushing in and soup [develop] that, and you can print a 4 x 5 negative wet.
 
Pasa: I read that Marlys always traveled with you and loaded the cameras.
 
Ray: Yeah, and she was the fastest there was at loading a Hasselblad, and she always kept the film straight. You have to know which roll is which, because I would say, “We’re going to push this roll a half [in development time to increase contrast],” or whatever. Under pressure, you have the president or Moshe Dayan and only a limited amount of time, so you really shoot like hell. We traveled a lot. We spent months in Japan, and we traveled for about 10 months with Carl Sagan around the world.
 
Pasa: Sid Monroe at the gallery told me that Life never ran the photos you took of the Hells Angels.

Hells Angels, Los Angeles, 1965
Bill Ray: Hells Angels, Los Angeles, 1965
 
Ray: The story was killed by the managing editor. I heard that he said, “I don’t want these smelly bastards in my magazine.” And that was after I worked on it a month. The thing about the Hells Angels is that they are now very popular. Marlys and I found those negatives and got them online, and the emails from all over the world are astounding.
 
Pasa: Your abilities show up in composition, people’s expressions and body language, and lighting — and most of what you did for Life was shot in ambient light.
 
Ray: That’s right, although I did almost 50 covers for Newsweek, for example, of Luciano Pavarotti and Itzhak Perlman, and those were all strobe. Another thing about the technique is that in those days — it seems so long ago now — you had to focus and you had to have the right exposure. Even though this digital revolution is truly a revolution — it’s just so huge it’s hard to comprehend — the basics, lighting and composition, are so important.

 

Natalie Wood on the set of "Sex and the single girl", with hairdressers, 1963
One of the places I learned composition was going to museums and looking at paintings. You kind of develop an instinct about the composition. But you have to be really fast. That’s the fun part. ◀

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

LIFE’s Moments: Monroe Gallery celebrates the work of Bill Ray


 Andy Warhol with Polaroid Camera, NY, 1980
Bill Ray: Andy Warhol with Polaroid Camera, NY, 1980

 
Via The Santa Fe Reporter
LIFE’s Moments
Monroe Gallery celebrates the work of Bill Ray
November 25, 2014
By Enrique LimĂ³n

Be it as a staffer for LIFE or a would-be one for National Geographic, documenting the likes of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy or riding along with the Hells Angels, New York-based Bill Ray is part of the elite who shone during the 1960s and ’70s with their impeccable timing and groundbreaking approach to photojournalism. On Friday, Monroe Gallery of Photography polishes off his archive and presents a comprehensive retrospective on his stunning works, several of which resonate particularly now, thanks to a poignant mix of nostalgia, superb, often on the fly technique and the current obsession with all things celebrity culture.

 “It was very busy and hectic as you would expect, but that was the norm,” Marlys, Ray’s wife of 56 years, tells SFR over the phone during what ended up being her first interview. Bill was off delivering prints to the lab.

“I made the best of it,” she continues, alluding to her husband’s busy schedule. “When he was in Vietnam in 1965, he wired and said, ‘I’m finished with the assignment and I can come home, or I can meet you somewhere,’ so I decided to rendezvous in Cairo…so you see, you always make the best of it.”

  Bill and Marlys’ love story would develop alongside his globetrotting work. More trips, accolades and encounters with the personalities of the time would follow. Ray’s roster includes iconic images of  Elvis Presley, Natalie Wood, Ella Fitzgerald and Andy Warhol, whom Marlys met.

“He was very, very quiet, patient and did exactly what Bill asked him to do,” she says of the pop artist. “It was a very successful take, and I think that double portrait of Warhol is a very nice touch.”

Reflecting on the impact of Ray’s images and the long legacy of those pictured in them, Marlys says, “They just keep going and people love them.” Back from his errands, the photographer would later email SFR singing his wife’s praises.

“Did she tell you I picked her up on a park bench in Minneapolis in 1956? Luckiest day on my life.”

-Enrique LimĂ³n

Bill Ray 5-7 pm Friday, Nov. 28 Monroe Gallery of Photography 112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800
Exhibition continues through January 18, 2015