Beauty pageants, carnivals and boat rides: such prosaic diversions provide the basis for late British photographer Tony Ray-Jones’s arresting, innovative work. Schooled primarily in America, where he fell in love with the renegade realism of Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, Ray-Jones returned to his homeland in the mid-1960s determined to portray its customs and rituals—an agenda that ran against much of the stodgy, commercial photography of the period. The results—penetrating and at times bizarre glimpses into a fading way of life, particularly within such seaside resorts as Blackpool and Beachy Head—have had a far-reaching influence, despite his lamentably short career (he died of leukemia at age 30). Compatriots Daniel Meadows and Chris Coekin, among his many admirers, are grouped with Ray-Jones in the new exhibit The British Are Coming at the Stephen Bulger Gallery. Their views of the countryside and its working-class population suggest that Ray-Jones’s project was an ongoing—and inexhaustible—one.

The British Are Coming. Artwork $700–$1,500. Jan. 11 to Feb. 10. Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen St. W., 416-504-0575, www.bulgergallery.com