William Gray Harris
William Gray Harris (born 1948) is an American photographer, videographer, and digital artist known for his diverse body of work featured on album covers, and in books, magazines, and newspapers worldwide. In a career spanning more than four decades in Hollywood, Harris made portraits of celebrities and notable personalities, and photographed architecture, designer interiors, and products.
Early life and Education: Harris was born in San Francisco, the second son of Robert Cronley Harris, an attorney, and Nancy Gray Harris. He attended Town School For Boys for eight years, where his art instructor, Sam Provenzano, a renowned local painter, recognized his talent and tutored him privately.
Harris graduated from the Stevenson School, a college preparatory school in Pebble Beach, CA, in 1966. An introduction to art dealer Nicholas Wilder, whose gallery was one of the epicenters of the 1960s Los Angeles contemporary art scene, inspired Harris to move to Los Angeles. There he enrolled the University of Southern California and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History in 1971. After graduation, he studied film-making technique and theory with Jordan Belson in San Francisco. When an important mentor, the avant-garde artist Liam O’Gallagher, moved to the Upper Ojai Valley in 1974, Harris followed and from 1975 to 1983 he taught photography and video at the Besant Hill School.
Career Highlights: Harris was an early adopter of video technology, acquiring in 1971 a Sony Portapak AV-3400, a battery-powered reel-to-reel video tape recording system. In 1973, a selection of stills from his early videotapes was published in Radical Software. In 1974 he acquired the new Sony VO-3800 ¾ inch U-matic videotape cassette system. His early abstract color video and print works were featured in solo exhibition at the Ventura College New Media Gallery in 1975.
Harris’s thermographic prints made on the 3M Color-in-Color machine were featured in Electroworks, a groundbreaking traveling exhibition organized by the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, NY., in 1979. His “Electrostatic Self Portrait 1973” was prominently featured in the exhibition catalogue, in magazine reviews, and in several books. It more recently appeared on the cover of The Classic Photography Magazine #7, Spring 2022.
Transitioning to Hollywood in 1984, Harris established himself as a photographer for the entertainment industry, making portraits of actors, singers, and musicians, and documenting on videotape the performances of legendary jazz and blues musicians such as Dorothy Donegan, Anita O’Day, Joe Liggins, Floyd Dixon, and Jay McShann. His fine art photographs were exhibited at galleries in New York and Los Angeles, where he had a solo exhibition in 1991 at the Photo Impact Gallery entitled “Divine Architecture.”
Digital Art and International Endeavors: At the beginning of the 21st century, Harris turned to creating digital images for web-based media and large scale digital transfer prints. His residency in a 1,000 year-old stone tower in Sutri, an ancient town near Rome, from 2016 to 2023, allowed him to capture an extensive body of images chronicling Italy’s rich artistic heritage, encompassing views of ancient Rome, and historic villas, gardens, and churches.
Notable Book Jacket Portraits
- Eartha Kitt: Confessions of a Sex Kitten; 1989 (back cover)
- Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti, by Radha Rajagopal Sloss, 1991
- Dustin Hoffman; AFI Life Achievement Award book, 1999
- Harrison Ford; AFI Life Achievement Award book, 2000
- Tony Duquette: More is More; 2009 (frontispiece portrait)
- Every Exit is an Entry: The Life and Work of Liam O’Gallagher, 2009.
- The Promise of Francis: The Man, the Pope and the Challenge of Change, by David Willey, 2014
Notable CD Album Covers
- Yma Sumac, Mambo Confusion, 1988.
- Warner Bros. Records, Detour Over the Edge, 1990
- LaVern Baker, Live in Hollywood, 1991
- Anita O’Day, At Vine St. Live, 1991
- Warner Bros. Records, Fluid Formations, 1991
- Warner Bros. Records, Cue It Up!, 1992
- Maxine Sullivan, Vine St. Live, 1992.
- Ruth Brown, Songs of My Life, 1993
- Benny Carter, Legends, 1993
- Hadda Brooks, Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere, 1994
- Dorothy Donegan, At the Embers Live! 2020
Selected Exhibitions
- “Electroworks,” Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, 1980
- “Electroworks,” School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto, 1981
- “Divine Architecture,” Solo exhibition, Photo Impact Gallery, Hollywood, 1992.
- Todd Kaplan Gallery, Los Angeles, 1994.
- Modern Living Gallery, Los Angeles, 1996.
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