DC Street Art: Murals and Graffiti in and around the Nation’s Capital

Charles Ray began his adventure in photography at the age of three when he used his mother’s Kodak Brownie camera to snap a selfie-although, that word hadn’t been invented in 1948. He didn’t get his own camera until 1962, after joining the U.S. Army and being sent to Germany. Since then, though, he has been photographically documenting his travels around the world. In addition to being an avid shutterbug, he’s an artist-was once editorial cartoonist for a North Carolina weekly newspaper, and has had art and cartoons published in a number of publications-and writer. First published at the age of 13, when he won a short story contest sponsored by a national Sunday school magazine, he has written for newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He published his first book-length work, an essay on leadership, in 2008, and has since independently published more than 60 works of fiction and nonfiction. Now an independent publisher, he is the author of the Al Pennyback mystery series, the Ed Lazenby cozy mystery series, and the Buffalo Soldier western/history series, as well as the popular Frontier Justice: Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal. In 2017, he published Ethical Dilemmas and the Practice of Diplomacy, an examination of the value-conflict issues facing American diplomats in a time of ethical and moral uncertainty. Ray has, career-wise, been something of a peripatetic nomad; twenty years in the U.S. Army, thirty years as an American diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service, and for the past five years, a freelance consultant, author, and lecturer. In 1990, he had a small (uncredited) role in the black comedy, Air America, as a dispatcher for the CIA’s covert airline in Southeast Asia, and has appeared in a number of documentaries over the years. A native of Texas, since retiring from government service in 2012, he has made his home in suburban Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, and spend a lot of his time studying and documenting the history of some of the lesser-known aspects of the area.