Uploaded April 2011 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago
In a career spanning almost 35 years, Professor Bill Jay quietly photographed, collected and catalogued informal portraits of almost 1100 photographers from every corner of the world. His "day job" was writing articles for photographic magazines, or lecturing new Arizona State University students on the history of photography. His pasttime was photographing the great, near-great, and almost-unknown photographers with whom he came in contact as he gathered material for yet another of his hundreds of articles or for one of his fifteen books. Watch as Bill reveals how this project got started out of an unsettling experience with British photographer, David Hurn.
In a career spanning almost 35 years, Professor Bill Jay quietly photographed, collected and catalogued informal portraits of almost 1100 photographers from every corner of the world. His "day job" was writing articles for photographic magazines, or lecturing new Arizona State University students on the history of photography. His pasttime was photographing the great, near-great, and almost-unknown photographers with whom he came in contact as he gathered material for yet another of his hundreds of articles or for one of his fifteen books. Watch as Bill reveals how this project got started out of an unsettling experience with British photographer, David Hurn.
