Lens Legend
Photographer Bill Ray has probed the personalities of celebrities Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, Rex Harrison, Woody Allen and Andy Warhol with such good taste, humor and insight that he has become synonymous with portraiture. Bill Ray: A Retrospective at the Leica Gallery gathers 84 of his best photos from his days at LIFE, as well as assignments for Newsweek, People, New York magazine and recent European freelance work.
"I've always approached portraits in a way that reveals something about the person," he says. "Basically, I'm going for a more unvarnished something in the expression, something in the movement that reveals something about the person."
Ray photographed Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy in 1962. "Everybody was there from New York, Washington and Hollywood. I was trapped down in front with all the other photographers, and I saw that there was zero opportunity to get the two of them together. I decided to go up and around in the old Madison Square Garden. I found a place somewhere up in there to place my camera on a railing, and I took the picture from there with a telephoto lens," he says.
He's photographed artists, actors, athletes, poets, film directors, musicians, politicians and common people throughout his 50-year career. He's also investigated social upheaval in Watts, grieving families in Ohio and teenagers dancing the twist while documenting the changing fabric of America.
"Only twice in my life I knew I was in the presence of a living god. One was Frank Lloyd Wright, and the other was General Douglas MacArthur. These were people that you probably didn't tell them how high to jump."
Humor has been important to him, too. His 1984 photo of Nelson Rockefeller greeting workers in upstate NY shows the former governor shaking hands with a worker wearing a cap reminiscent of English worker Andy Capp. Likewise, his 1964 portrait of Kareem Abdul-Jabar is full of good fun. Ray accompanied the athlete to a tailor's shop in Beverly Hills where he humorously caught the tailor measuring him for a fitting.
Today, at age 70, Ray continues to work daily from his studio in Central Park West. He and his wife arise early each day to play tennis before embarking on a day now devoted to corporate assignments, but he still cherishes capturing the human spirit.
"Traveling around the world and meeting fascinating people are the most rewarding things," he says. "I always try for verismo. You have the feeling that it is coming to you directly without any artifice."