Council’s Decision to Sell Influential British Photographer’s Archive Roundly Criticized

Crufts Dog Show (1968) by Tony Ray-Jones. This image was not part of the sale by the Kent City Council | Collection of National Media Museum via Flickr

A U.K. council is facing criticism for selling a significant archive of photos by influential post-war photographer Tony Ray-Jones, who is often cited as the biggest inspiration of Martin Parr.

According to a report by The Art Newspaper, Kent County Council had a sale of its art collection on Tuesday (March 10), which included 33 photographs by Ray-Jones.

Ray-Jones is widely regarded as one of the most important British photographers of the post-war period. His photographs focused on everyday life in England, often capturing people at seaside resorts, festivals, fairs, and other public gatherings. According to the Tate, Ray-Jones used a 35mm Leica M camera, sometimes hidden inside his raincoat, to photograph everyday moments as they unfolded, without staging them.

Although his career lasted little more than a decade, Ray-Jones developed a distinctive photographic style and greatly influenced a generation of photographers who followed. His approach to documentary photography helped shape the work of photographers including Parr as well as Daniel Meadows, Chris Steele-Perkins, and Simon Roberts.

According to The Art Newspaper, Kent County Council cited financial pressures as the reason for selling works from the collection. It says the photographs had been stored in the basement of County Hall in Maidstone and needed to be relocated. The council also acknowledged that the works had not been offered to any of the county’s museums or galleries.

“Due to the lack of viable alternative storage options and in light of the significant financial pressures facing the county council, no suitable alternatives were identified,” a spokesperson tells the publication.

However, the decision to sell the Ray-Jones has raised concerns among photography historians.

“The disposal of significant photography and other artwork [from public collections] is always a concern, especially when it includes rare work from figures such as Tony Ray-Jones—one of Britain’s great documentary photographers and an inspiration to luminaries such as the late Martin Parr,” photography historian Michael Pritchard tells The Art Newspaper. “Kent’s short-term financial gain will be at the long-term cultural expense of Kent residents and visitors.”

John Brazier, who led arts and museums at Kent County Council from 1990 to 2005, further tells the news outlet that he obtained the Tony Ray-Jones photographs after a county touring exhibition in the late 1980s and that they were kept in appropriate archival storage at RAF West Malling, a former Royal Air Force station.

Many of the photographs in the sale show public events across Kent, including May Queen celebrations in Chatham, a Dickens festival in Broadstairs, and a beauty contest in Margate. The images were taken during a two-year period in the late 1960s when Ray-Jones was working on a project documenting how people in England spent their free time. The photographs were later included in A Day Off, a book published posthumously by Thames & Hudson in 1974, two years after Ray-Jones died at the age of 31.

Image credits: Header photo via Flickr/National Media Museum.