Ray McSavaney

Ray McSavaney (December 18, 1938 – July 2, 2014) was an American fine-art photographer 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 died 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. 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. Subject to the draft he 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. In an art class with Robert Heinecken at UCLA, McSavaney got a brief introduction to photography but had only slight interest in his teacher's subjects from ‘found objects’, but he kept some of Heinecken's teachings in mind, and later 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.

Seeking temporary escapes from what had become a stultifying office career, McSavaney took Sierra Club wilderness hikes on which he usually carried his small camera. At times he shared his pictures in various amateur photography shows, learning from feedback comments and critiques. He continually expanded his basic skills through college classes, photography workshops with the experts, assiduous reading, and intensive self-study. Sometime in the early 70s, still employed by Hughes but increasingly interested in photography, McSavaney enrolled in an Ansel Adams photography workshop, soon delving into the art and practice of classical black and white Western landscape photography. By this time Adams, a long-established master, was the 'go to' guru for photographic truths and McSavaney was ready for them. Adams encouraged his workshop students to put up their best photographs for review and critique. Thinking he had only masterpieces, Ray was soon brought to reality by the quality of Adams’ images and those of the other workshop instructors — Roger Minick, Wynn Bullock, Paul Caponigro, and comparable masters. Determined to achieve that same proficiency level, he began working on improving his craft and his artistic ‘seeing’.

In addition to the subject itself, McSavaney cultivated a sensitivity to its immediate surroundings and overall quality of light. He worked at getting a feel for its immediate environment and interrelationships among its elements. Always aware that there were at least two people involved in a photograph — the photographer and the viewer — he aimed to have the maximum emotional impact on the viewer. He planned and visualized his final print accordingly. Averring that he found the world difficult to understand “through isolated bits of information”, that is, a single photograph, he knew that he wanted to work with related subjects, ideally in a series. He discovered that subtle relationships become clear when presented in a ‘context’ of several complementary photographs of the same or equivalent subjects. By a subject's 'relationships', he meant shapes, forms, tonal values, quality of light in its surroundings, and even color. Well aware of the work of Minor White, in addition to that of Adams, McSavaney no doubt knew of the effectiveness of presenting interrelated photographs - which White referred to as equivalents or as sequences.

While on a 1972 Sierra Club photography workshop he showed prints to the instructor, Bruce Barnbaum, who was very much impressed by their quality and originality. As ardent outdoorsmen, both soon bonded on subsequent Sierra Club trips. In the late 70s, becoming increasingly disgruntled with working for an impersonal corporation, McSavaney embarked on his own career in fine-art photography. The friendship and collaboration with Barnbaum soon led to formation of the noted fine-art photography program, the Owens Valley Photography Workshops (OVPW). The pair, later joined by John Sexton, previously one of Ansel Adams’ photography assistants, formed the OVPW staff. As program co-directors, the three organized and managed it until 1990 when they dissolved their partnership by mutual agreement. McSavaney soon established his own photography workshop program; Barnbaum and Sexton still have active fine-art workshop programs.

At the beginning of his photography career, McSavaney worked only on subjects that strongly attracted him — not atypical of many photographers until they find their own unique ‘vision’. Conditioned by his years in urban planning, he continued his quest for ‘context’ and relationships for his photographic subjects. As noted, instead of isolated subjects he saw that their interrelationships produced stronger compositions. His eight-year series on the “Walking Trees” at Yosemite National Park and the ever-changing graffiti of the Santa Ana Freeway Bridge, continued with some of White's themes.

One theme permeating McSavaney's photography is lifelong concern for the environment, an attitude that he described as “… a journey through the natural and urban landscapes of the uncertain present". So, recurring themes of how man shaped the environment, and conversely how the environment shaped man, are found in his photography, his writings, and workshop discussions. Readily apparent in his writings is the ongoing fascination with natural landscapes that he wanted to express through nuances of fine art landscape photography. By his own admission, his favorite destination was Yosemite National Park. However, several years were to pass before he could photograph there to his satisfaction.

In formulating a photograph in his mind's eye, a process Ansel Adams termed ‘visualization’, McSavaney always looked to making a photograph with the strongest emotional appeal. In his view, that meant harmonizing in the final work the subject's normally awkward brightness range and tonal values. And for that, he had to perfect his increasing mastery of photographic composition - defined by Edward Weston as 'the strongest form of seeing'. That took much practice and intensive experimentation, especially since he was attracted to scenes of tonal extremes. In an apparent contradiction, he also was attracted to scenes that he could portray in a limited tonal range. He termed that ‘high key’ in which the print tonal values fall on Zones VI – VIII in Adams’ terminology. Parenthetically, Adams' had words of caution, a caveat emptor, in use of the Zone system as the key to making a good photograph. Wisely stating that it was only a means to an end, a viewpoint that McSavaney quickly adopted, he advocated using it with awareness of its limitations and with its utility. Adams illustrates this in an encounter with a quotidian photographer at Point Lobos stating that, after the Zone System is learned in detail, it becomes a way of thinking and of applying technical principles while visualizing a potential photograph. It has a basic simple mantra, however: Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights.