Ray McSavaney
| Ray McSavaney | |
|---|---|
Ray McSavaney, 1983
byChristopher Purcell |
|
| Born |
Ray McSavaney December 18, 1938 Los Angeles, California |
| Died |
July 2, 2014 Los Angeles, California |
| Education | University of California, Los Angeles, 1963; B.A. |
| Occupation | Fine Art Photographer, Teacher |
| Known for | Black & White Photography: Urban scenes; Southwest Landscapes and Anasazi Ruins, Studio botanical arrangements |
| Website | raymcsavaneyphotography |
Ray McSavaney (December 18, 1938 – July 2, 2014) was an American photographer of fine art based in Los Angeles, California. Throughout a spartan but active life, practicing classical Western black and white fine art photography, he made enduring photographs of buildings, bridges, and street scenes of the vast city, ancient ruins and panoramic vistas of the Southwest, and studio setups with varied floral subjects. He passed away from lymphoma in Los Angeles Veteran’s Hospital. Warm tributes to his life and career by some of his close friends and colleagues appear in a ‘celebration of life’ memorial recounted in ‘View Camera’ magazine.
Born to suburban Los Angeles parents, McSavaney became aware of the visual arts — as did most kids of that era — from the comics, newspaper pictures, free merchandizing calendars, and posters of all kinds. He describes his boyish amazement in the late 1940s at the new phenomenon of a small grainy black & white TV program. Vacation trips with his parents introduced him to Western landscapes when he made amateur photographs with a consumer camera — and, no doubt, had Kodak process the film. Those trips generated a latent interest in landscape photography. Ray started college at USC but soon transferred to UCLA, from where he graduated in 1963, majoring in Art with an emphasis in Design. He soon received greetings from the Selective Service and enlisted in the US Army. Trained by the Army in photogrammetry and drafting, he worked on various military engineering projects. Leaving the Army after two years he returned to civilian life in Los Angeles. Putting his college studies and Army experience to use, he worked for Summa Corporation, a Howard Hughes Company, on various building and land development projects. On an art class with Robert Heinecken at UCLA, McSavaney got a brief introduction to photography but had only slight interest in his teacher’s forte of assembled innovative images from magazine illustrations — an example of art from ‘found objects’. Although Heinecken’s class on the aesthetic principles of photography had minimal interest for him, he kept some of it in mind. Later on, he was able to apply it in his own work. Enjoying the outdoors, Ray was much more attracted to natural landscapes. Sometime in the mid-60s those became his first serious art photography interest.
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