Early Inspirations, Martin Parr and Tony Ray-Jones

For Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones became a defining inspiration as he represented a British photographer

taking contemporary methods first used in America, and using them to document working class Britain.

“Suddenly here we were some of the ideas and thinking that we had seen from the American greats brought across the Atlantic and taken into an English context. All the surreal qualities and all the offbeat way of looking at things were there in Tony Ray-Jones” (Parr in Williams, 2011, 21).

 Rarely publicized during his generation, Tony Ray-Jones has now become one of Britain’s most influential figures in photojournalism, indicated as being “a catalyst in the development of independent photography in Britain” and a “vital element in the post-war, transatlantic dialogue concerning the art and appreciation of photography” (Roberts, 2005, 7). In particular, his book ‘A Day Off – an English Journal’ narrates the hilarity and eccentricities of British society described by Russell Roberts as “a book of significance, cutting across various pictorial traditions and contributing to a new analysis of social space” (Roberts, 2005, 7).

Described by Russell Roberts as being “the direct line of Ray-Jones’s influence” (Roberts, 2005, 19), ‘The Last Resort’ is comparable to Ray Jones’s ‘A Day Off’, in its subject matter and in particular, the formal structure of the photographs. Parr has captured Ray-Jones’s ability to narrate the layout of occurrences inside the frame of a camera. Moving the viewers gaze between foreground and background, the photographer is significantly raising the value of the image from a single interaction, to multiple events. “Arranged like actors on a set with each character appearing to exist independently and collectively within the frame” (Roberts, 2005, 16). In Derby Day, Epsom, 1967 (Fig .1) Gerry Badger describes the experience of viewing as “a fiction, and Ray-Jones was concocting a fictional vision of the English, founded on clichés” (Badger, 2007, 141) ‘Derby Day’ for example illustrates the bizarre combination of a public space intertwined with animal activity.

Tony Ray Jones, 'Derby Day Epsom'

Or ‘Tripper Boat, Beachy Head’, 1968, a young couple’s romantic gesture becomes the central theme amongst a crowd of expressionless, unenthusiastic pensioners. 

Tony Ray Jones, 'Tripper Boat, Beachy Head'

‘The Last Resort’ continues in the same manner, capturing a “visual choreography that is closely derived from Ray-Jones” (Roberts, 2005, 19). A child desperate for attention is left crying whilst its mother lies exhausted below, a lady sunbathes amongst heavy machinery, leaving her child to play on the concrete runway, two children stand alone, melting ice creams running down their faces. Both photographers are not just describing a moment in time; they are manipulating its appearance and the appearance of those within.