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photo by Carol Drew
Following an early interest in photography,
Ray Drew began his photographic career at 21 as a cadet press
photographer.
After four years at The Canberra Times he went to The Australian newspaper. He then worked
as a contract freelancer for several national publications, including Vogue
Australia, Home and Garden, and the National Press Gallery at Parliament
House in Canberra. Moving to Melbourne in 1968, he married Christine Moore. They divorced in 1974. They had two children, Samala and Christopher. |
By the early seventies, he worked as Pictorial Editor of the Sunday
Observer, and subsequently, for three years as the photographer
in the Australian Womens Weekly Melbourne office.
The psychedelic revolution of the late sixties and early seventies did not leave him untouched, and eventually he abandoned commercial photography to work on a new project which he felt more relevant at the time -- an independent crisis intervention service for the Melbourne public. Link-Up, a small telephone referral service, became a crisis intervention service under his direction. He obtained government funding. At its peak, the organization had over 100 volunteers who spoke to 30,000 callers a year, 24/7. An outreach service for suicidal people followed. In the mid-eighties he moved to Canberra, working for a time in community service organizations as a community development officer and coordinator. He resumed photography, with a great deal of stage and rock music work: bands included The Easybeats, Jackson Browne, Simple Minds, and others. In the early nineties he studied full time at the University of Canberra, gaining a first class Hons degree in Communication and Media. He went on with a scholarship for his MA in Communication, specializing in Professional writing, winning the Heinemann Prize for writing, and reaching the final of the National Short Story Competition for three successive years. He began a PhD, intrigued by the subject of ideology and the history of Western man's notion of self, which was never a static thing. At this stage he realized that the dominant ideology consistently sought to distance human beings from nature and other species, and from any realization of similarity between human beings and animals -- for example, men were eventually construed to have souls, something apparently absent in animals. The matter of methodology for the thesis proved a thorny issue and although approved to complete the degree, he put aside his project in the second year. He went on to complete a Grad Cert in Psychoanalytic Studies at Deakin university, and continues study for a Masters in that field. ANIMAL ISSUES Ray currently specialises in photographs of animals. He
wishes to convey his realization that they are sensitive beings, with feelings
and personalities. Unfortunately many human beings exploit their fellow
animals. (It is a sobering experience to see how wild animals flee in
terror when humans approach). "Human beings, despite their civilized
veneer, are animals as
well, and inseparable from nature -- only the dominant ideology we
have unthinkingly embraced for centuries has prevented us from seeing that
simple fact." Ray Drew can be contacted at raydrew@raydrew.net |
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