Bill Jay champion of the 'Great British photographic revival' dies, aged 68
Bill Jay dragged British photography kicking and screaming into the late 20th Century. Gerry Badger pays tribute to a remarkable and influential character
Bill Jay, Stourhead gardens, England, 1982 © David Hurn/Magnum Photos
The name of Bill Jay, who has died aged 68 at his home in Costa Rica, will be well-known to older readers of the BJP, such as myself. He made his home in America for many years, so it may not be so familiar to younger readers, but he was a major mover and shaker in what has been called the 'Great British photographic revival' of the late 1960s and early 70s. His career in this country lasted a mere half-dozen years or so, but in that time he was the dynamic editor of Creative Camera in its earliest (and some say its best) years in the late 60s. Then with financial partner Tristram Powell, he published and edited the renowned, but unfortunately short-lived magazine, Album, in addition to organising a series of now legendary photographic evenings at the ICA in London. If that were not enough, he was also the picture editor of the Daily Telegraph and the European manager for a large picture agency. In all these forums, Jay fought for the medium's acceptance as a serious art, introducing the exciting new photography that was being made in Europe, Japan, and especially the United States, to a largely moribund British photographic scene.
At that time, British photography seemed stuck between an antediluvian amateurism and a shallow commercialism. Jay, his great friend David Hurn, and people like Colin Osman, the publisher of Creative Camera, photographer Tony Ray-Jones, Sue Davies and Dorothy Bohm, founders of the Photographers' Gallery, blew away the cobwebs and brought British photography into the late 20th century and the international arena. From those evenings at the ICA, which culminated memorably with a talk by the great American master, Paul Strand, came much of the inspiration for the Photographers' Gallery, the Photography Committee of the Arts Council, and more.
Write stuff
Following the demise of Album, Jay moved to America to study at the University of new Mexico in Albuquerque with the distinguished photo-historian, Beaumont Newhall, and the dynamic teacher, Van Deren Coke. In 1972, he joined the faculty of Arizona State University in Tempe, where he founded the Photographic Studies programme, and in the 80s he wrote a series of articles for BJP, with subjects ranging from keraunography to early techniques in post-mortem photography. He settled in Ocean Beach, near San Diego, after retiring from teaching in the late 90s, but continued writing and agitating for photography, despite severe heart problems in later life.
In a videoed interview (tinyurl.com/qslf4q) that catches the flavour of the man, Jay credits David Hurn as the inspiration for his writing career. He'd shown Hurn his own photographs, to be told they weren't quite good enough, but that his enthusiasm for the medium could be channelled into writing about photography. Average photographers were 10 a penny, said Hurn, but good photographic writers were in short supply. So a career was born, but Jay continued to take one particular kind of photograph - portraits of the many photographers he met and interviewed. A fine selection of these was published in 1983 in the book, Photographers Photographed.
Latterly, Jay wrote a regular, and eagerly awaited column, End Notes, for the bi-monthly American magazine LensWork, and continued to collaborate with David Hurn. Two books they did together for LensWork are essential reading for any budding photographer - On Being a Photographer (1997), and On Looking at Photographs (2000).
Eclectic taste
As Hurn indicated above, the great strength of Bill's writing was his enthusiasm, and this translated into a certain eclecticism.
He was just as happy delving into the quirky bye ways of photography as writing about the great names. Album and Creative Camera during his tenure were never just about introducing the canon, although that was an important function, because in late 60s Britain, even photographers like Robert Frank and Paul Strand were virtually unknown. But Jay, unusually, was as interested in 19th as well as 20th century photography, and in things like the snapshot, the tintype, or spirit photography, at a time when vernacular photography was rather despised by would-be photo-aesthetes. In this he was way ahead of the game.
Consider something he wrote in the May 1968 issue of Creative Camera. It could have been written yesterday and be considered just as relevant:
'Contemporary photography is full of crap - the most pungent pile is the belief that 'good' is synonymous with unintelligible. In fact the opposite is true. The best photography communicates and continues to communicate with the viewer. And this is the most difficult style to achieve since it demands so much more from the photographer (in a word, integrity) and so little from the technique. The history of good photography has been the history of pure photography.'
Bill Jay's passing at his recently adopted home of Samara in Costa Rica leaves a gap not just in British and American photography, but in the photographic community generally.
- Jay's articles and essays can be read at billjayonphotography.com.
