Tony Ray Jones was born in England, but moved to America when he achieved a scholarship at Yale University School of Art, to study photography. When he returned to England to continue his photography around 1965 he was shocked by the difference between the two cultures in regards to photography, in particular England's lack of interest towards commercial photography. 
In the October 1968 issue of Creative Camera magazine, he described what he was trying to achieve:

"My aim is to communicate something of the spirit and the mentality of the English, their habits and their way of life, the ironies that exist in the way they do things, partly through their traditions and partly through the nature of their environment and their mentality. For me there is something very special about the English 'way of life' and I wish to record it from my particular point of view before it becomes Americanised and disappears."

His photographs are documentary style similar to that of Martin Parr and Tom Woods;
Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "Ray-Jones was in many ways a social anthropologist with a camera, but it is his eye for detail and often brilliantly complex compositions that sets him apart. His images often appear cluttered ... On closer inspection, though, what we are glimpsing is several small narratives contained in the bigger defining one."
I agree with this opinion, and like Nick Waplington, am not too fond of the anthropological approach to photography, and want to engage more with my subjects.