2008 Infinity Award: Writing

Bill Jay is the publisher of over 400 articles and author of more than 20 books on the history and criticism of photography. Born in London in 1940, Jay became the first Director of Photography at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts and the first Editor/Director of both Creative Camera and Album magazines. He left England in 1972 to study with Beaumont Newhall and Van Deren Coke at the University of New Mexico, following which he founded the program of Photographic Studies at Arizona State University, where he taught history and criticism classes for 25 years. Bill Jay's Album, published by Nazraeli Press in 2007, includes a selection of portraits of eminent photographers from the past three decades, all annotated with Jay's handwritten captions. Although now retired, he continues to write, photograph, and run a website of his work.