Ray Manley
Photographer
1921–2006
Cottonwood born and Verde Valley raised, Ray Manley is one of three Arizona natives, along with Ted DeGrazia and Jerry Jacka, in our inaugural Hall of Fame class. And his familiarity with the state was one reason he seemed capable of photographing anything from an expansive view of Oak Creek Canyon to an intimate scene of cowboys around a campfire. “Some of the finest studies we have been privileged to present have been the result of his skill with the camera,” Editor Raymond Carlson wrote in our August 1956 issue.
Manley started making photographs in grade school; later, inspired by an Esther Henderson photo he’d seen in Arizona Highways, he acquired a 4x5 view camera and made some shots in the Flagstaff area. One of them, of the San Francisco Peaks, caught our editor’s eye and appeared on our back cover in October 1944, during World War II. The timing was fortuitous, as Manley had just completed U.S. Navy boot camp and was awaiting orders. His superiors saw his work in the magazine and sent him to the Navy’s photography school in Florida, where he became an instructor.
The change of fortune solidified Manley’s career path. After the war, he pursued freelance photography in Tucson before opening his own commercial studio there in the 1950s. The work left him plenty of time to devote to scenic photography, and he grew as a writer, too — among his stories for Arizona Highways were an in-depth piece on Canyon de Chelly and a look at how the Verde Valley had changed during his lifetime. And he wrote and photographed several books; the last of them, Ray Manley’s Navajoland, was published in the mid-1990s.
It’s his landscape work for Arizona Highways, though, that arguably is Manley’s most enduring legacy. Even today, some photographers use the term “Ray Manley sunset” to describe a stunning evening scene.
— Noah Austin
Arizona Highways inaugural Hall of Fame Inductees