American Colour 1962–1965 presents a selection of previously unpublished Tony Ray-Jones colour photographs from the earliest period of his work. Taken from the extensive archives held at the National Media Museum in Bradford, this book brings together the early experiments that would inform his later work.

Ray-Jones later referred to these early photographs as ‘isolated sketches’, and they were a part of his formative experience. At the time colour was considered vulgar and not the medium of serious photography, but for Ray-Jones it expressed the excitement of America in a way that black and white could not.