Friends, collectors, and strangers know Ruby Ray’s work --even when they don’t. Ruby Ray’s iconic portrait of Beat author / Punk Avatar William S. Burroughs' vibing, serene, Interzone menace can be seen on MySpace.  Her photo of late punk rock legend Darby Crash is the cover of Darby biography Lexicon Devil. Other photos appear in magazines, on book covers, album covers, posters. Her punk rock photography pops up uncredited on fansites and music history websites. Ruby Rays’s esoteric studies and close collaboration with musicians and artists helped spawn a current that became trance music.

Photographer, artist, and journalist Ruby Ray entered the shock wave that was the punk rock underground in 1977. Ruby became a member of seminal San Francisco punk culture magazine, Search & Destroy, documenting and fostering the emergent scene.  When Ruby criss-crossed continents on a trip to London and Egypt, S&D’s in-your-face music and culture inflammation went global. Ruby ran London-based Rough Trade Records’ San Francisco store, and sheltered their traveling bands from England.  In 1980, she co-founded with v.vale the more deeply focused alter-culture publication RE/Search magazine. During this first San Francisco era, the RE/Search studio on Romolo Street in San Francisco’s North Beach became an international locus of cross-pollination, one of those places where artists feel the freedom and compulsion to redefine themselves and their genres.

An early multi-media artist, Ruby found inspiration in haunted post-industrial cityscapes, insect wings, and the golden thread of the mystic. Investigations compelled her to lie in the sarcophagus of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh…read widely…decipher hieroglyphs…work with a Gurdjieff group.  Meeting up with industrial music mavens Factrix, she added live, multi-image projections to the influential industrial band’s performances. In the first exhibition of her original anti-art, Nart, shown in 1980 at San Francisco’s Target Video, Ruby would project new work in a new medium: stereo slides. That same summer she helped create the flaming “debutante ball” summer solstice celebration, held under a freeway near the railroad tracks, and shut down by police.

In the early 80’s, Ruby Ray migrated again, becoming part of the next international art explosion --New York City’s East Village. In the East Village, she exhibited photographs and continued experiments with live, multimedia projections of her growing body of work. Joining with musical collaborators to create the group Saqqara Dogs, Ruby’s lightshows mixed her multi-image photography with collaged found materials. Investigating how altered states are evoked with colors, symbols, and sonic instigators, the Saqqara Dogs performance introduced a novel music and visual experience fans claimed generated powerful synesthesia. Saqqara Dogs combined psychedelia with Middle Eastern rhythms to produce a new music event which later morphed into rave culture.  While SDs’ hallucinogenic music and visual onslaught was presented in dives and museums across the U.S., the band gained a notorious fan. In 1987, Andy Warhol featured an interview and performance of the group on his New York-based TV series, Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes.

After the birth of her son in 1988, Ruby took sabbatical for subtle energy and consciousness studies, learning the healing arts.  She returned to photography with a trip to the Indian ruins of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, and had her first solo exhibit in 2004.

For those who lived through it, for musicians and musicologists, culture critics, anthropologists and anyone who takes their inspiration with a non-sterile, extra-pointy edge, Ruby Ray is completing her photographic memoir of First Wave punk rock in California. The collection of 250 images reveals the raw, amazing California punk scene, 1977-1981. And now, new large digital photo works and a visual blog, Songs of Nart, are in progress. Ruby Ray sustains her original-issue profile:  high-functioning cultural enzyme who shows us how to keep surprising ourselves with non-virtual living.  She continues her search for mind altering images.

-Debra Xit 2008

Avengers live
1977
Penelope, Greg and Danny

Bags
1978
Alice Bag sings and snarls, Pat Bag on bass holds the stage down

Bobby Pyn
1977
Darby Crash early incarnation

Man in Black
1980
Boyd Rice and civilization’s noise

Punk: A Dangerous Profession
1978
Beat-hippie-punk artist Bruce Conner and Mutants’ roommate Joann Berman meets up backstage at the Mabuhay and show off their leg injuries.

William S. Burroughs in a San Francisco Garden
1980
Leaving the wild boys behind, bill graciously poses in a San Francisco garden.

Chip Dil Goes Jackknife
1978
Chip Kinman, guitarist for the Dils, could pull off an incredible jump while playing at breakneck speed!

Mick Jones of The Clash
1979
The Clash agreed to play a punk benefit at the Temple Beautiful, and Mick Jones got in an incredible jump.

World Governments Resign
1978
De De Troit, singer of the punk band UXA, flaunts a prediction at City Hall.

Cramps backstage at Napa State Hospital
1978
Lux interior, Ivy Rorshach, and Bryan Gregory after playing for the inmates.

Darby Backstage Cut Up
1978
Germs singer, Darby Crash, and Brendan Mullen, founder of the Masque, in the mirror. Taken backstage at the Mabuhay after the Germs set the same night Sid Vicious was there.

The Way I Walk
1978
Cramps Lux Interior and Bryan Gregory

Booji Boy Finds Pretty Pictures
1977
Devo singer and mad genius, Mark Mothersbaugh, in his alter ego as Booji Boy, shops at the wharf.

Dickies in the Porn Shop
1978
(LtoR) Karlos Kaballaro, Billy Club, Leonard Graves, and Stan Lee (who snagged Iggy’s ex-jacket in a deal)

Class War
1977
Tony and Chip Kinman of the Dils were brothers from a military family who wrote epic anthems.

LA Line Up
1977
Left to right: Jena, Pat Smear, Lorna Doom, Delphina, Alice Bag, Nicky Beat, Darby Crash, Pleasant, Trudy, Hellin Killer and friend.

Unknown Factrix
1980
Industrial mavens, Factrix, take their stand over North Beach. In the band are (L-R) singer Cole Palme, bassist Joseph Jacobs, and guitarist Bond Bergland.

Flipper in the Dark
1981
Poster children for 20th century angst, (LtoR) Ted Falcone, Bruce Loose, Will Shatter, and Steve DePace Band pose in complete darkness under the railroad tracks.

Sally in the girl’s bathroom
1978
Sally Webster, singer for the Mutants in the Mabuhays main hangout.

Sweat
1978
Tommy Gear of the Screamers caught cooling down backstage after a wild set at the Mabuhay.

Double Vision
1980
Ivey displays her startling vision.

Mystery of Ivy
1978
Cramps lead guitar player and muse, Poison Ivy Rorschach

Let the last bastion of the bourgeoisie Quake
1978
London’s premier punk poet, John Cooper Clark, declaiming at the Prince Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, London

Exene at Tire Beach
1978
Exene Cervenka poet and singer for x finds her own version of a throne.

Leo Zulueta in North Beach
1980
Leo initiated us into all black Iban and tribal style tattoos.

Avenging Angel
1981
Enfant terrible, Monte Cazazza’s chosen role was created spontaneously with dripping seaweed at Ocean Beach.

Mr. Tomata du Plenty to you
1978
Screamers singer Live in hyper extended awareness

Nicky Beat, anti-consumer advocate
1977
Weirdo’s drummer outside tower records in Hollywood.

VS Girl Rock
1979
All girl punk band, VS, compete against the beauty of a California sunset (L-R) Jeorgia Anderson fashion terrorist, gave out tickets for sartorial neglect, Olga de Volga, Carola Anderson, Ms. X and Kathy.

Plungers on Broadway
1978
La girl gang comes to San Francisco to support bands, Trixie Left, Mary Rat and Hellin Killer right

Strange Finds
1978
Sally and Sue singers for the Mutants find artifacts of another time at the city dump.

America’s Children Born to Survive
1978
The Avengers’ lead singer, Penelope Houston, crawls from the protection of the underbrush.

Tommy Gear Saws the Book Of Knowledge
1978
Impromptu act at Tuxedomoon house party

Lady Madonna
1978
The night after the Sex Pistols broke up, Sid Vicious made it to the floor of the Mabuhay dressing room with Hellin Killer from girl gang The Plungers, after Sid tried to upstage the Bags set with his punk antics.

Target Video Films the Screamers 1978
Joe Rees and Jill Hoffman of Target Video shoot the Screamers’ first video, "122 hours of Fear."

Rated Triple X
1978
Members of X show their stuff, DJ Bonebrake, Billy Zoom, and John Doe (R)

Genesis and Cosey
1978
Genesis P. Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle pose in the back garden of their London flat.

Paul Roessler and Tomata du Plenty on Broadway
1978
Screamer heartthrobs on famous street in North Beach

Plugged In
1978
Drummer Terry Bags is a natural at Tuxedomoon party

You’ll Need a Gas Mask
1979
Machine Maker, Mark Pauline (L) and Musician /filmmaker Monte Cazazza meet up at Mark’s outdoor performance in Golden Gate Park.

Work, Work, Work for the Rest of Your Life?
1978
After contemplating what he was up against, Hector Penalosa of the Zeros taped his bass with a message that resonated with the young punk audience.