 "Photo: Ariel Min/The Daily Texan")
Annie Ray is kind of a big deal. Or, at least that’s what her Web site claims.
dds are if you live in Austin, you’ve seen an Annie Ray photograph. Maybe it’s your friend’s Facebook picture, a group shot of laughing party-goers at Beauty Bar. Maybe it’s in the latest issue of local glossy Rare, where Ray’s portraits of well-known Austin individuals line the pages. Regardless of where you’ve seen her, Annie Ray’s name and photos have quickly become notorious around Austin.
“[She’ll take your photo], and magically, everyone looks hip and cool and lively in the end product. Or maybe everyone looks totally ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter, because all your friends look that way in their shots, too,” says Michelle Cheng, an Austinite who visited Ray’s photo booth at an event at Copa Bar & Grill in January.
Ray has become best known in Austin for the photo booths she sets up at various venues. Downtown nightclubs like Beauty Bar and The Mohawk frequently hire her, but recently she’s been shooting more highbrow events such as business conventions and weddings. Complete with bright, looming spotlights and an assortment of props, Ray’s makeshift photo booths have been called “part performance art, part photography.” Post-photo booth, Ray hands out a business card with her Web site address, where her photos can be downloaded for free.
“Usually, people start out being really resistant,” Ray said, sipping an iced coffee and sitting cross-legged on a bar stool.
“I’ll approach people and ask if I can take their picture, and they’re like, ‘Um, okay,’” she says. “Then, when I start taking their picture I’ll be really cheesy, and [tell them], ‘Give me more! Give me more!’ Those photos after I say that? When you can see — do they open up? Are they embarrassed? Those are the best ones. Those show you who these people really are.”
Ray doesn’t just photograph people; she sees them. And that’s what’s made her so successful. She’s remarkably receptive, and she knows it.
“My true passion is people,” she said. “Growing up, [as an only child] I was really quiet, and would just study people.”
Now, when they come into her photo booth, she’ll start conversations to warm them up, to make them feel more comfortable with the palpable uneasiness that comes with getting photographed.
The bright lighting Ray uses in her shoots adds a surreal touch to her photos that make them undeniably distinct. In one image, two 20-somethings embrace. The photo is blurry except for the couple’s faces; their eyes shut tight, mouths open in laughter. In another, a petite girl bites into a giant slice of Home Slice pizza, an orange cardboard mustache taped to her mouth.
Ray’s interest in photography began on a lark during her senior year of high school. After taking a photojournalism class, she placed first in a photography contest for high school students in which contestants took street shots on the UT campus. Ray studied fine art photography at the University of North Texas and moved to the Austin area after graduation for an internship in Round Rock with commercial photographer Gary Russ.
Ray’s photo booths began in fall 2007, when one of her friends pitched her idea to Allen Chen, editor of the events Web site The Austinist.
“It sounded like a fun idea,” Chen said. “We wanted to give her a chance.”
Shoved in the dark, back corner of The Mohawk, Ray admits she was nervous.
“I just started randomly shooting,” she said.
Fortunately, it worked.
“Annie Ray is some kind of photographic genius,” Chen said. “Everybody wants some of what she’s got.”
As she talked about her development as a photographer, Ray name-drops an array of artists, photographers and writers she cites as influences: New Yorker illustrator Chris Ware. The “American West” series by Richard Avedon. Portraits by Diane Arbus. The evolving scene of trendy “party photographers” spearheaded by blogs like LastNightsParty and The Cobrasnake.
“I watched the LastNightsParty guy [when he was shooting at SXSW] and figured out how he shoots, how he’ll single one girl out and get her to open up to him so he can take her picture,” Ray said. “After a while, I walked up to him and says, ‘I know how you do it! I’ve got you all figured out!’” Ray wags her finger, laughing as she recalls the encounter.
Ray’s style is a fusion of everything she has astutely observed in her 25 years. Still, she doesn’t come off as a copycat. On the contrary, Annie Ray is doing work that’s completely unique. She’s not an imitation of these other artists. Rather, she has a continual, controlled awareness of what is going on around her, sensing when something works.
Perhaps what has made Ray so successful is this remarkable transparency that accompanies everything she does, her way of spotting and shamelessly pointing out reality.
“Annie has this way of bringing out hidden expression and qualities of a person that a lot of people don’t have,” Chen said.
And whatever she’s doing, it’s working.
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