Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) was a Canadian-born American painter, lithographer, photographer, and teacher.

[1] He was born on September 5, 1906, in St. Catharines, Ontario, and spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York.

In the 1940s, he served as the chief of visual presentation in the United States Army Air Force, in the weather division.

In New Orleans, he painted and photographed cemeteries and jazz musicians (requiring a permit to visit bars normally restricted to blacks).

[5] Fortune Magazine sent Crawford to the Bikini Atoll in 1946 to record a nuclear weapons test.