RAY MANLEY

It'S A RARE WINTRY DAY on the outskirts of Tucson, and in his house, decorated with vintage cameras and old family photographs, beneath the snow-blanketed Santa Catalina Mountains, Alan Manley is reaching into the past. From his closet, the bearded 70-year-old pulls out a 4x5 Linhof folding camera and numerous images made by his father, Ray Manley - whose long career, chronicled in the pages of Arizona Highways and elsewhere for decades, made him one of Arizona's most celebrated photographers. Manley's relationship with Raymond Carlson, this publication's longtime editor, dated to before World War II. "He has been throughout the years a consistently dependable photographer," Carlson wrote in the August 1956 issue of Arizona Highways, "and some of the finest studies we have been privileged to present have been the result of his skill with the camera." Indeed, some photographers still use "Ray Manley sunset" as shorthand for a spectacular evening scene.

In that same issue, Manley was more modest. "I'm a very fortunate fellow," he wrote. "That's what people tell me often, and that's what I often tell myself."

RAY MANLEY was born on September 4, 1921, in the small Arizona town of Cottonwood. There, horse-drawn carriages crossed paths with cars on a main street that, at the time, was still covered in dirt. Weeds grew along its sides. Manley grew up in the Verde Valley, a virtual playground of wonder for a boy who loved the outdoors. He fished with his father in Oak Creek Canyon, camped near the Verde River and climbed the ladders to Montezuma Castle to explore its upper rooms. Inspired by the natural beauty around him, he began making photographs while attending grade school in the Cottonwood area. A few years later, he earned a Boy Scout merit badge for his photography. In Manley's chemistry class at Clarkdale High "How can one interpret a subject differently that has been photographed many times before? It is in his answer to this problem that the photographer places himself alongside the creative artists who are making something different out of the same old elements. Look what authors do with the same twenty-six-letter alphabet, and painters with the same red, yellow and blue."

School, his teacher encouraged him to pursue that passion, introducing him to film processing and allowing Manley to experiment in the darkroom. During his senior year, he used a World War I Signal Corps camera to shoot for the school's yearbook.

He drove the rough roads to the Navajo Nation the summer after he graduated, in 1939. The trip likely was when he met Harry Goulding, the amiable Monument Valley trader who'd recently introduced Hollywood director John Ford to the area. That fall, Manley enrolled at the Flagstaff school now called Northern Arizona University, with the intention of becoming a science teacher. According to Alan, he planned to cover his expenses by doing photographic work for the college newspaper and yearbook. He wouldn't graduate, but he would meet the love of his life.

"Dad had a roommate in college named Charles Osterberg, who later became a renowned oceanographer," Alan says. "Dad met Charles' sister, Ruth. After that initial meeting, the two were inseparable and did everything together."

Around the same time, Manley saw a photograph by well-known Arizona photographer Esther Henderson (see page 22) and was inspired to take photography more seriously. He acquired a 4x5 view camera and bought his first 10-sheet box of Kodachrome film. At $1 a sheet, the film stretched Manley's budget, so he scrutinized subjects around Flagstaff prior to exposing it. The young photographer ultimately produced a set of images that included an old tree stump, his bright-eyed girlfriend and the San Francisco Peaks.

The latter shot was what got Manley into the pages of Arizona Highways. Carlson purchased it in 1940, and Manley's photograph of the Peaks appeared on the back cover of the October 1944 issue.

WITHIN A FEW YEARS, Manley dropped out of college and began working for the Phelps Dodge Corp., splitting his time between his work as a chemical analyst and his love of photography. He married Ruth in 1942, and she joined him in Clarkdale, where they resided in a small, company-owned house near the high school. Their daughter, Carolyn, was born in 1945, and Alan followed in 1949.Before that, at the height of World War II in the summer of 1944, Manley completed U.S. Navy boot camp and was await-ing orders. But his superiors saw Manley's work in Arizona Highways and, instead of sending him overseas, assigned him to the Navy's photography school in Pensacola, Florida. Before long, he was an instructor of still photography, a position in which he remained until the war was over.

The change of fortune was a turning point in Manley's life and career. "As yet, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, in or out of uniform," he wrote in 1956. "I have no doubt that if I had been assigned to duty in some other field for this length of time, I would not be where, or what, I am today."

"The scene, as far as the placement of natural features is concerned, remains the same for all comers. Cameras, lenses and films are essentially alike and the techniques of handling them may be mastered by anyone. Obviously, the difference must lie in the interpretation."

After his military career, Manley returned to the Verde Valley and eagerly pursued photography for Arizona Highways. His first photographs from the Navajo Nation, Old Man and Sheep Camp, were published in the August 1946 issue. The following month, his shot of the West Fork of Oak Creek appeared on the magazine's cover.

The same year, the family relocated to bustling Los Angeles to allow Manley to fulfill his long-held desire to attend the Art Center School, now known as the Art Center College of Design. This educational institution where legendary photographer Ansel Adams once taught turned out to be a disappointment for Manley: He learned that students weren't allowed to study color photography until their third year, and color was the only type of photography he was interested in. Soon, he decided he could learn more in the field than in the classroom, so he again dropped out of school and returned to the Grand Canyon State. In February 1947, he began a stint as a struggling freelance photographer in Tucson, working for Charles W. Herbert, founder of Western Ways, an independent photoand story-producing outfit.

Manley realized that Herbert might sell the business and leave him without a steady income, so he and another Western Ways photographer, Naurice "Reese" Koonce, struck out on their own, opening Ray Manley Commercial Photography on Tucson's Broadway Boulevard in 1954. "Dad was taking a big chance by going out on his own with his best friend, Reese, since many small businesses fail," Alan says. "He had a young family to provide for, but he wasn't left much of a choice. Thankfully, it worked out well."

While the studio provided a good life for him and his family, Manley continued to devote time to his other true love: scenic photography. He even branched out as a writer, authoring several articles that accompanied his images in Arizona Highways. In the September 1957 issue of the magazine, Manley shared “Bracketing the correct exposure is important, even at $2 each with 5x7 color. It is false economy to skimp on exposures, as any veteran photographer will tell you. Better to over-shoot and bring back sure results than to economize on film and have nothing to show for the trip but near misses.”

With readers a trip he'd taken to his boyhood home. In the article Return to My Valley, he wrote about three Verde Valley towns of his childhood - “I came remembering Indian legend and tales of the ranchers and miners who in time had established the towns of Clarkdale, Jerome and Cottonwood” — and shared how each community had changed in his lifetime. And the front cover image, of a boy wading through the Verde River beneath the ruins of Tuzigoot National Monument, harked back to Manley's own youthful experiences.

While Manley's love of Arizona was legendary, he eventually wanted to broaden his horizons. In 1958, he and his family took their first trip to Europe, where, using his 5x7 view camera, he photographed Italy, Scotland and Norway, as well as the Brussels World's Fair.

Manley's daughter, Carolyn, remembers her father wanting to photograph Rome's Colosseum from a higher vantage point. He went to a nearby apartment building and knocked on the door. A woman who didn't speak English answered. Manley "Success, I believe, depends upon two factors: the willingness to plan and prepare and the ability to anticipate the unusual and take advantage of it."

Showed her his camera, but she wasn't impressed and began to close the door. When Manley put his foot in the doorway and handed her money, she became a bit more impressed. Having made his own good fortune, Manley spent several hours waiting by the window, then took a nighttime photograph of the Colosseum, using the lights from passing automobiles to illuminate it.

"If my dad saw a picture in his mind, he would do almost anything to get it," Alan says. "Nothing illegal, of course, butpretty much anything else to get the job done. What he did in Rome was nothing out of the ordinary for him."

In 1959, feeling that his business needed a change, Manley had a $50,000 studio built on Tucson Boulevard and invested another $50,000 in modern equipment. The studio was 150 feet deep, and its biggest room was 40 by 30 feet - large enough to photograph an automobile. By this time, Manley was one of the most respected commercial photographers in the nation; later on, he'd earn the coveted title of master photographer from the

"The everlasting view camera and tripod are a must for scenics, with about four first-rate lenses of varying focal lengths, a filter assortment, a light meter, basic flash equipment, and a sufficient quantity of film holders to make frequent reloading unnecessary."

Professional Photographers of America. In the 1960s, Manley took three world tours, carrying with him his trusty 5x7 Linhof, several lenses and a Hasselblad roll film camera for lecture slides. On his final global jaunt, he and his wife met up with world travelers Herbert and Eleanor Ullmann to discuss the book Eleanor would write to accompany Manley's photographs. The two combined their talents to create World in Focus, which featured an introduction by Senator Barry Goldwater - a fellow photographer and, by this time, a good friend. Years later, after Manley had circumnavigated the globe five times, he published a similar book, Ray Manley's World Travels. Ruth wrote the colorful text, and the book featured 260 of the world's most photogenic places, with some of the unrivaled images being Celtic crosses in Ireland's Monasterboice ruins, the Shah Mosque in Iran and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. The photographer paid homage to the Grand Canyon State, too, with Ray Manley's Arizona. The magazine-style book contained about 75 color photographs, including a Navajo man looking out at Monument Valley, a snow-covered Oak Creek Canyon and Mooney Falls in Havasu Canyon. Carlson, Manley's longtime associate, wrote the foreword, and the book was sold at newsstands and through the magazine's gift shop. The 1970s saw big changes in Manley's life. He opened the Manley Gallery, in the lobby of his studio on Tucson Boulevard, and sold autographed prints of Arizona scenes such as Mission San Xavier del Bac, Oak Creek and the Grand Canyon. The Manley Gallery eventually moved to its own building on Fort Lowell Road. Manley then turned the commercial photography business over to his son to focus on a new endeavor, Indian Land Tours. Through the new company, he took visitors to places such as Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, sharing his own unique experiences along the way. This business, later called Ray Manley Tours, also offered guided international trips. "My dad's years of photographing his favorite places in Arizona - Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, the Sonoran Desert - and having his photos published in Arizona Highways led to increased travel and migration to the state," Alan says. "Years later, his tours offered Arizonans the opportunity to explore and appreciate the state." But the self-described "fortunate fellow" had one more bit of good luck: In the mid-1990s, Alan came upon thousands of black and white negatives he'd never seen printed. They were photos his father had made in the 1940s and '50s in both color and black and white, but only published in color to sell many years before Alan had found them. The rediscovery led to Manley's final book, Ray Manley's Navajoland, an entrancing portfolio that ranks among the photographer's best work. In 1997, a stroke left Manley partly paralyzed and unable to speak. He saw his final "Ray Manley sunset" in 2006, six years before Ruth did. By any measure, though, he lived a life full of the people and landscapes that brought him professional success and personal joy - especially in his native state. "This is a land that might be measured in terms of infinity and eternity," he wrote of Arizona in 1956. "It takes nerve, I admit, even to hope to catch either the reality or the spirit of this country on a sheet of film. But who would be content to work always under the controlled conditions of an indoor studio with this challenge at his doorstep? "Certainly not I." AH