Douglas, Isle of Man

Tony Ray-Jones came to the United States to study at Yale, eventually finding a mentor in Alexey Brodovitch, the famed art director of Harper’s Bazaar, in New York. He began to practice street photography by roaming Manhattan’s neighborhoods and capturing inhabitants’ unguarded expressions. Following his studies, he carried this approach back to England, where he turned an anthropological eye to the British at play. He was especially attracted to the eccentric leisurely activities of people living in seaside towns and islands, which were still relatively uninfluenced by modernization. In 1967 Ray-Jones toured these towns, including Douglas on the Isle of Man, where residents sunbathed with unusual choices of location or clothing. His aim was, as he wrote, to show the “sadness and the humor in a gentle madness that prevails in people.”