BIOGRAPHY
Bill Ray was born in Nebraska in 1936. His mother and brother are recognized regional artists. Bill's interest in photography was developed by the time he was 12, when he enrolled in classes at the Jocelyn Museum in Omaha. His career began with a job on the Lincoln Journal & Star the day after graduating high school and continued while attending university. In 1955, after a Chicago job with United Press, he took a job with the Minneapolis Star & Tribune, a newspaper which enjoyed a reputation for trend-setting photography. In 1957, while attending a University of Missouri workshop, he was offered and accepted a job on the National Geographic staff. While arranging to move to Washington DC, he was recruited for the Life magazine Chicago bureau. He changed his plans and moved to New York and began freelancing for Life magazine. During this time he covered a group of disgruntled Detroit families who drove to Alaska to homestead, known as the 59ers, the national visit of Nikita Kruschev, Elvis Presley leaving for Germany, Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK, ad countless celebrities of the times. He had a solo show at the Leica Gallery.
In 1963 he joined the Life magazine staff working out of the Beverly Hills bureau. Here he covered top movie stars, including Natalie Wood and Ingrid Bergman, as well as the Alaska earthquake, the richest man in Japan, and the Vietnam war, with many cover stories. From the Paris bureaus in 1968 to 1971, he covered everything from ParisTurkey, and wildlife in Ethiopia. fashion to Jackie Kennedy's wedding to Aristotle Onassis, travel in
After the demise of Life magazine, Bill photographed many patent models for a book The Art of Invention. He photographed 46 covers for Newsweek, worked for Fortune, Smithsonian, and Archaeology magazines, and many Fortune 500 corporate annual reports. Bill went through the Straits of Magellan with historian Samuel Eliot Morison. He traveled the world for eight months with Carl Sagan doing the stills for Cosmos. Bill's work is included in The Best of Life, Life in the 60's, The Best of Smithsonian, Great Magazine Covers, Rollingstone Images of Rock & Roll, and Hollywood Babylon.
Bill's work has been exhibited at ICP, The Leica Gallery, Staley-Wise Gallery, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, the IBM Gallery, and more.