Ray Manley Country

wallas, scorpions, raccoons, skunks, javelina and deer.

The close contact with nature, the individual attention given by the teacher to the school's four pupils, the high grades achieved on state tests all point to a better-than-average education, say the Suarezes.

But daughter Joette, 12, admits one drawback: "There's only one boy."

Joette and her sister, Anita, 10, run the winding dirt streets with the other girls in easy companionship - barefoot and bare-legged, talking of animals, boyfriends in town, and ghosts.

"When I first moved here, it really spooked me," said Joette, who loves telling tales of ghosts in a deserted house where lots of animals died and of voices and noises in the night that she can't explain.

Her father tells of an experience he can't explain either. He tells of the night he had trouble closing the gate that keeps intruders out of the dam area, and how he had only a light for company in the deep darkness. Suddenly the light flickered, and he looked to see if one of his friends was sneaking up on him. Instead, a form about fourfeet-high came floating past him, then disappeared.

Joette had an explanation for that. It was the ghost of the schoolteacher, who died with her husband some years ago when their car went off the dirt road, at a point where two white crosses now stand.

"She was looking for her baby," she said.

But ghosts or no, Duan and Janie, his wife, still take lanterns and friends to fish at night in the icy Salt River.

Born in West Virginia, Duan served in the Army eight years, then held "every kind of blueor white-collar job" while trying to succeed as a guitar player. He almost made it with a Western rock group he organized called the "Sundowners" but "no matter how I planned it, everything kept going wrong."

Finally, a friend suggested he find Christ. He did. "I stopped smoking and drinking and turned it over to God 18 months ago, and he's done more for me in the last 18 months than in a lifetime."

One of the things God did, believes Suarez, was get him the job as hydrooperator at Horse Mesa Dam.

"There were 20 bids on this job. I had no seniority, no nothing, but I had faith the Lord would give it to me. When I came out here, guys asked me, 'Who do you know? You got an uncle at Salt River?' I told 'em 'I got a friend in Jesus Christ.'"

Since they moved to the dam site over two years ago, the Suarezes have fit happily into the town life. They have adjusted to the fact that doctors were hours away, the fire department is the fire extinguisher on their wall, and gas is unavailable so they must "top off" their tanks to return home anytime they leave on shopping trips.

But the small monthly rent they pay the Salt River Project ($11) and the free utilities help. So do the neighbors. Everyone checks with everyone else to see if they need anything when they go to town. And they share milk, lawn mowers, washing machines, and guns. But they don't hunt in their own area, although it is permitted in season. They go miles away.

"Here, nature is to enjoy," says Suarez, expressing the strange dichotomy of the hunter who loves wildlife. Suarez looks around his grassy oleander and fruit-tree-lined yard perched like a green island below the rocky walls that simply shut out the day. He had finished barbecuing steaks in the cliffs' late afternoon shade and was preparing to take them inside to serve, out of reach of the evening bugs.

"I wouldn't want life in town with the traffic, the hustle where you've got to put up with your neighbors day in and day out," he says. "This gives you time to think, to be by yourself, go fishing or quail hunting by yourself. In town you have to strive to find time for you. Here you don't have to it's here.

Ray COUNTRY

An examination of Ray Manley photographs reveals his sensitivity to nature. The land and the scenes effect him in subtle ways - the calm of the desert sunset, the strength of the Grand Canyon, the peaceful feeling that surrounds White House Ruin in Canyon de Chelly - and the moods of the man are as delicate as the moods of nature. Most often he works alone, preferring to hold converse with himself and his subject rather than another individual.

Ray is not the first person to focus his talent on the scenic Southwest, but he is certainly one of the most successful. The mood and character of his subjects transcend the two-dimensional surface of film and magazine pages, inviting the viewer to join him in this special moment, in this special place.

“In 1939 I bought my first 10-sheet box of Kodachrome,” says Tucson photographer Ray Manley. “I studied my subjects well before exposing that film because a dollar a sheet was a lot of money to pay for film in those days.” A lot of film has gone through his camera since that time 40 years ago. And the price hasn't improved any — it's still a lot of money to pay for film. But it was those 10 shots, pictures of an old cedar stump, the San Francisco Peaks, and his wife, Ruth, that were submitted to Arizona Highways Magazine on the off-chance that they might just be acceptable. They were. Of the lot, three were selected for covers. And Ray Manley's career was on its way.

For Manley, who jokes that he's not had such a good average since, it also was the beginning of a life-long mutual admiration society of two: Ray Manley and Arizona Highways. Former Editor Raymond Carlson, who bought Ray's first pictures, called him 'my young man,' and remained a source of encouragement through the years.

Although Manley is well-known as a large format photographer, his picture-taking career didn't begin with a big camera.

“During high school,” says the robust 58-yearold, “I photographed sports activities with a WWI Signal Corps camera that my father gave me. Then, later, I switched to 35mm, which was easier to use but didn't give me the quality I wanted in prints.” This led the young man into a serious study of the work of Ansel Adams, Victor Kepler and other large-format lensmen. It intrigued him enough to make a serious change. Manley purchased a 8x10 view camera, and he "used the monster to take football groups and other activities" while attending Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff. It wasn't to end his search, however. The perfect camera was still eluding him.

In an early-day copy of Arizona Highways he happened to see a color photo of the Snow Bowl near Flagstaff taken by Esther Henderson with a 4x5 camera. "Almost immediately I became a confirmed user of the 4x5. It produced the negative size Highways wanted but it also offered more depth of field and was less expensive than the 8x10."

But it still was not the camera. He didn't find that until 1948, when a 5x7 Linhoff came into his life, and continued to stand him in good stead for the next 31 years, becoming his personal trademark in seven trips around the world.

In 1942, WWII forced Ray to leave college and take up the work of free-lance photographer on a full-time basis. After serving a stint as a photography instructor for the Navy during the war, he, in association with his close friend Maurice Koonce, founded a commercial photography business in Tucson. He was on the road to success.As a free lance, he created successful photofeatures for the Saturday Evening Post, and Life, as well as National Geographic, True, Argosy and other top magazines.

Later, a variety of assignments took him around the world seven times. The huge stockpile of travel photos created were sold through a New York agent for a variety of uses, including calendars, record covers and encyclopedia illustrations.