Maude Schuyler Clay and Langdon Clay - Interview by Jan Walaker

‍

It is Sunday in Oslo. Music by the band Big Star fills the room. I am at my computer trying to cook up some interesting questions for Maude Schuyler Clay and Langdon Clay. The Clays are brilliant photographers based in Sumner, Mississippi, USA. I was introduced to them by my friend Richard Dumas in Paris some years ago. I later had the good fortune to visit them in Mississippi. They are close to one of my all time favorite photographers, William Eggleston. There are other meeting points that makes the communication between us easy and gratifying. They both lived in Manhattan in the same period as me, the early 1980s. During that time NYC was very different from today. Times Square was filled with porn theaters. Artist like Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Futura 2000 and Andy Warhol lived and made the city colorful. Music would pump out in clubs like CBGBs, Pyramid, Mud, Save the Robots, Hurrahs and Area. You could live and drink cheaper in a city that was almost bankrupt at that time.

‍

Maude Schuyler Clay

Is Elvis Presley alive? (kidding) His music is definitely alive for many people. It might be a stupid question, but what does Elvis Presley mean to you and people in Mississippi ?

Of course growing up 90 miles south of Memphis in the Mississippi Delta, I was aware of Elvis, but was really much more into the Beatles as a kid. Maybe that is because when I was around 10, the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show and Beatlemania took hold of the country. I did once see Priscilla at a high-end ladies shop called Levi’s in Memphis, replete with mile-high black hair, heavy black cat-eye makeup, thigh high boots, a mini-mini skirt, a fur coat, and escorted by a couple of thuggish bodyguards. She was a very interesting creature, though pretty far removed from my world of classic, conservative taste. One memory I have is my cousin Stephanie Eggleston had a 45 record of “Love Me Tender” that she played a lot, and I recall that song making me feel strangely melancholy and wistful for some sort of “romance,” as far as a little kid can fathom such. Those were the days of AM radio and Elvis songs were played constantly on local radio stations. He was a “native son” for sure. He was kind of the white bread version of black blues mixed in with honky tonk. After his death - I saw the glaring headline “Elvis Est Mort” at a café outside Gare du Nord in August of 1977 and his death was quite shocking, since he seemed to be the kind of person who might live forever – I listened to his music a bit more closely. Though I still do not really listen on any regular basis to Elvis, I appreciate his beautiful voice, charm, and strange Southern energy that blended lots of elements of music together.

Tell me about your relation to William Eggleston?

Bill’s mother (1912-1995) and my mother (1918-1988) were sisters who grew up in Sumner in the Mississippi Delta in the house built by their parents (Bill’s and my grandparents) where I live now. After attending the University of Mississippi and a brief stint in Mexico at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, I moved to Memphis to go the Memphis Academy of Arts in the early 70’s. At his behest, I became Bill’s “apprentice” – though you could hardly call riding around in the late afternoon light, looking through stacks of hundreds of his prints, and the occasional darkroom work being an apprentice. I learned a lot from observing and listening. He has been a big influence, starting with when he was a young man in a long leather coat and driving a Ferrari around the Delta– there’s fourteen years between our ages; I thought he was the coolest because he talked to kids like we were regular people. He built his own 6 foot tall speakers in his room at home and listened to Bach and jazz, and was not like anyone I knew. One of the reasons I started working with the Rolleiflex (see below) and concentrating on taking pictures of people in color, was to differentiate myself from his (color) photographs. Anyone who has taken (or seen) a color photograph since William Eggleston’s Guide came out in 1976 is probably well aware of his influence on the medium.

I see in your biography that you started out shooting with a Rolleiflex twin lens. Do you still use that camera and what about that format was attractive to you?

I don’t use the Rolleiflex much anymore, though I did use it for well over thirty years. I love the square format and the medium size negative. I carried that camera everywhere and thus was able to get all the people pictures in MISSISSIPPI HISTORY (Steidl, 2015) plus a lot of other pictures that showed what things looked like from 1980 to about 2010. When my ability to focus the Rollei waned, I started using a Fuji 645, which had an auto focus feature. Simultaneously to the Rolleiflex years using color film, I was using a Mamiya 645 for all my black and white landscape work (DELTA LAND, 1999, and DELTA DOGS 2014.) For the last few years, I have been using a Leica digital that has a square format option. It is very portable and I love using and carrying this small camera. My “recent” work starting around 2010 has been in digital, and I have found it difficult to return to film. I still harbor the idea of returning to film, but it is just hard to go back. There was something so mysterious and wonderful about the two parts of photography that comes with using film: 1) the photographs you took and what result you think you might have gotten, and 2) the results of what you actually got after you develop the film and see the contacts. And when I go back over all my work done in film, sometimes looking at those contacts yields pictures I was not even aware were good the first time around. Perhaps that is time shifting one’s perspective about what a “good photograph” is.

You moved to NYC in your early twenties and worked as photo editor for Vanity Fair and Esquire. What was that like?

I had to make a living and lucked into some really good jobs in NYC. Those were the days when you looked in the NYTimes help-wanted section and often found interesting opportunities. One of the first jobs I had that I loved (mainly thanks to Stephen Shore who knew the owners) was working at the LIGHT Gallery for about three years, where I say I got a “graduate degree” in the history of photography; meeting and working with most of the great living photographers of the day - Andre Kertesz, Harry Callahan, Frederick Sommer, Nicholas Nixon, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand, to name a few. I also befriended Evelyn Hofer and was much inspired by her work. Other jobs I had in New York were as a photo editor for magazines. That was pretty hard work (long, stressful hours in an office, and things were always changing at the last minute.) At Vanity Fair alone, I worked under three different editors: Richard Locke, Leo Lerman, and Tina Brown. I met a lot of people that I still keep up with to this day. In the end of that phase of magazine photo editing, I realized I was sending people out to do the work that I wanted to be doing myself. I had a great run of luck with jobs, but never really made a “career” out of being a gallery person or a magazine editor. I think I had an idea of being some sort of artist myself and just wanted to get out there and start doing that. It helped that I married someone (Langdon) who was making a living as an architectural photographer and he afforded me some freedom to take that plunge. I was able to do some work as a photographer for some of the mags that I had worked as an editor for, and that was fun.

What makes a good photograph for you?

That is a hard question; it varies and my definition of a “good photograph” has morphed over the years. With all the photographers in the world now (using iphones, etc), there are just so many images out there! I like series of photographs, and that is important to me: getting a group of photographs over time that seem to work together to tell some sort of story. But often I ‘m not completely aware of what that story is until I have amassed quite a few photographs. You might say my main goal is to leave a record of what my world looks like. I am not so much into “making art” (constructing) photographs, though I respect those that do that, but I am more interested in the documentary, “recording” aspect of photography. As Langdon would say, “we are leaving a record for the Martians,” like how we now study the Lascaux cave drawings.

Tell me about your relation to the band Big Star.

I knew Alex Chilton when I was living in Memphis and going to the Art Academy, and he asked me to take some pictures of his band. Those pictures, taken when I barely even knew how to use a camera, were one more lucky thing that happened. I really didn’t realize Big Star was such a big deal until I was walking down Bleeker Street a few years later and saw “Radio City” featured in the window of Bleeker Bob’s Record Store. Subsequently, Alex (or maybe it was John Fry of Ardent Records) had used Bill Eggleston’s “Red Ceiling” photo on the cover of that record. Later, Rhino and other music people found me and have used my (1973) photos of Big Star.

We talked about the fact that politics in the US are so fucked up and that in spite of that, so much great art emerges. Why do you think that is the case?

No real clue on that one. Maybe great art comes from adversity. Could that be the case? Look at the blues in Mississippi – that’s one obvious example of that.

I think one of my favorite American women is Lucille Ball. Who would be yours?

Well, just off the top of my head: Georgia O’Keefe, Berenice Abbott, Eudora Welty, but I am sure there are many more. Women should be ruling the world.

Tell me about your relation to Sally Mann.

Sally has been my friend for quite a few years, and I very much like and am inspired by her work. We have a few things in common, maybe because we have both photographed some of the same subject matter: our children and the landscape. Langdon knew Sally long before I did because his sister and Sally were roommates at Bennington College. Also, Sally and her husband, Larry, lived and worked for a short time at the Clay family farm, Wild Farm, in Vermont. I initially met her at the LIGHT Gallery in the 1970’s. Then, after we moved back to Mississippi in the late 80’s, she has come here to visit and photograph a few times; some of her “Deep South” work was done around Tallahatchie County and other parts of Mississippi. We have visited her a few times in Lexington when driving though Virginia en route to NYC or Maine. When I was the photo editor of The Oxford American Magazine (another great job I lucked in to for a few years), I did an interview with Sally for our “Southern Women” issue in 1999. She can be wickedly funny, but she is super smart and very serious about her work. I appreciate that particular combination in people. She came to do a “conversation” with me in February of 2023 at the Mississippi Museum of Art, where I had a show called ”Portraits of a Place.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6vUYHQB32c)

What are you working on right now?

Archiving all the work from about the last 40 years, and I continue photographing, just trying to keep a record of things. Most of my work is based where I live: in the Mississippi Delta. I am a Delta Road Dog and love to drive around (especially in the late afternoon light) looking for photographs. As for subject matter, I am still pursuing that “triad of available art subjects,” as they taught at the Art Academy: still life, landscape, and portraits. I want to add, and this is no doubt evident from this interview, one of the many things I learned from Bill Eggleston was to understand that talking about photography is secondary to actually looking at photographs. That old cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” really is true.

‍

Langdon Clay

What motivated you to became a photographer?

I became a photographer mostly by default. In high school I’d been making soundless 8mm movies with classmates. Finding time to shoot scenes between classes, sports, and theater became a nightmare for all of us. In frustration on spring break in New York 1968, I picked up a second hand Pentax Spotmatic 1A and went to the St. Patrick’s day parade on Fifth avenue. Robert Kennedy was running for president and was the parade’s Grand Marshall. My first roll of Tri-X film was shot right there with a cast of thousands. I haven’t put a camera down since.

What kind of equipment do you use when you shoot?

I started with that Pentax Spotmatic, then moved to the Leica IIIf, then an M4 I inherited from my grandmother who had used it for birds and flowers and Easter egg hunts in her back yard. My CARS series was done with a Leica Cl and a 40mm My first view camera in the 70’s was an 8x10 Deardorff. I did B&W for a while then color (much cheaper then) for a series called Flatlands which was shown at the Corcoran in Washington,D.C. and later became a bound portfolio. From about 1978 until 2008, I had a career working for shelter magazines like House & Garden and on coffee table books like Jefferson’s Monticello by Howard Adams. It was architecture, interiors, gardens and food, mostly done with Nikon F3 (who can forget the sound of that motor drive?), a Rolleiflex 6006, and an Arca Swiss 4x5. In the digital era I started with a Canon IDS Mark III, a real blunderbuss, and moved to the more demure Sony mirrorless. I like the Sony because there are adapters for every lens I own, which is great because it’s a shame for good glass to sit in a closet. Currently, in this strange beautiful area south of Memphis where I live called the Delta, I use a Kodak Master 8x10, a Fuji GX680III - basically a motorized view camera for 120 film, and a Sony A7RV that’s always in arm’s reach. If you do a lot of tripod work, film is still pretty viable. I have a film darkroom with a Jobo machine for color and can develop anything up to 8x10. From there it goes to the scanner and the 44 inch inkjet printer. Last but not least is my pocket clamshell Contax T from 1984 with a super sharp Zeiss 38mm. I have happily passed this one on to my daughter Sophia, so it’s not wasting away. The bottom line on equipment if you’re a shooter is not its collectable value or its fashion accessory value, but rather how well it survives your abuse or serves your vision.

It might be hard to say, but what might be your all time favorite photograph?

I like all kinds of photographs. My favorite form for viewing them is in a book. Books can take photographs to another level in how they are ordered, how the layout makes photos reverberate one to another from page to page. Forewords and afterwords and other written context can add to your understanding of what sort of story is being told. Or not. A random series of images is interesting to me too. But a book has a comfortable personal scale. After that would be a boxed portfolio, precious by nature and meant to be viewed in a more studious manner. On walls in galleries or museums can be fantastic too. Or not. The scale is usually bigger and the involvement of curators, with agendas of their own, naturally remove the work from its earlier connection to the maker(s). What is deemed important or fashionable from age to age becomes more apparent in those environments as work gets out in the world. One thing is certain in the triumvirate that is the small world of photographer (maker), commercial gallery, and non-commercial museum: they all need and feed each other, but not always in equal measure. If I have to pick one photograph as a favorite it would be a depression shot by Walker Evans from 1936 in Atlanta called “Love Before Breakfast” (which I bought for $20 in 1972 in New York City; it was toned and rag-mounted by photographer George Tice, who just died this May). It depicts straight- on two similar but not the same row houses behind a wooden fence with billboards for two movies (“Chatterbox” with Anne Shirley and “Love Before Breakfast” with a blond Carole Lombard sporting a black eye) and a Vodvil act plastered to it. In the foreground is a roadway with a left lean to it. Snippets of buildings in the background suggest this is now a sooty industrial area that has seen better times. I have studied and pored over this photo until I am there in it, and realized that every part of it is as important as every other part.The only other image that has held me so firmly in its grip is a painting by Vermeer called A Maid Asleep.

Your work often depicts a certain place in a certain period of time and gives a real vibe of that place at that time. What are your thoughts about those bodies of work? They sort of feel like portraits of places.

My goal for a photograph is to show as clearly as possible what I think I see. Many choices are made leading up to just making one single photograph with the simple intention of leaving evidence for future generations - or even the Martians when they get here. I don’t expect to effect social change, or improve anyone’s living conditions, or to have great gobs of emotion come bubbling out of the frame. People bring their own baggage to photographs which can take on a life of their own once they are out in the world and no longer yours. But as far as my intention goes it is simply to show, for example, what cars on the streets of New York City looked like in the 70s. Or what 42nd street between 7th and 8th avenues looked like in 1979, or 2011, or now in 2023. If that is a portrait of a place, then maybe I’ve done my job. What projects I choose when following my own nose in this manner is really just a way to get me to learn how to see. A selfish exercise in the proper sense. As a side note, over the years, as I’ve happily found myself in Paris, I’ve taken to going to parks and finding buildings still existing as they were 100 to 120 years ago when photographed by Eugene Atget. He is in a sense my teacher or guru as I place myself where he stood and try to replicate how he saw or shot. It is humbling and chilling and instructive and fun. But try as I might I will never be able to see how someone else has seen, only what they have presented to me for my consideration. Everybody needs heroes.

What makes a good photograph for you?

What is thought of as a good photograph has clearly changed some in the nearly two centuries since photography began to compete with the other visual arts. For me it usually involves having a “there there:” something to contemplate, something to consider as evidence, elements in arrangements that inform, surprise, delight, shock, confuse, or amuse. Some aspects remain familiar, having been inherited from traditional forms, and some are unique to photography. Stopping time and capturing light seem endlessly fascinating to me. What’s good about photography in general is that it can take you to a place you can’t go yourself because it is from another time or maybe out of your orbit. Gordon Park’s Southern world or Nan Goldin’s drug world or Robert Mapplethorpe’s gay world, or Bill Eggleston’s color world can all be good. I suspect that what makes them good is how they are presented in groups so the meaning is compounded in the whole body of work. Of course I’ve mentioned some very good photographers too. So how does that happen? What propelled them to do what they did?

What are the main differences between living in NYC and Sumner, Mississippi?

People often ask about the culture shock in moving from the bustling streets of Gotham to the provincial pace of the Mississippi Delta. I don’t remember it as hard because it wasn’t cold-cocked. We had Maude’s family and a certain level of society’s backup systems already in place. Fedex and fax allowed me to fly for work from Memphis instead of LaGuardia. We were there to raise children in a safer, slower environment anyway. It was a new phase of life and actually opened up new photo work and personal work opportunities. That was 36 years ago but in more recent times, with polarized American politics being what it is, you might think it would be uncomfortable. Not really - we’re just the crazy artists down the street and nobody is in our face about anything. But after all this time I’m still a damned yankee.

I know you have a book soon coming at Steidl Verlag with the title 42nd Street, 1979. Tell me about the book.

In the late 70’s in New York City, much needed renovating. The theater district is a major draw for tourism which helps pay for keeping New York New York. In 1979 knowing changes were in the wind, I corralled some friends and went to 42nd street (The Deuce) with an 8x10 camera. After some trial runs I figured that to map the block between 7th and 8th avenues, it would take a series of 22 vertical negatives strung together to record the seedy detail without distortion. It took 3 months of a couple of nights a week to achieve this. The original prints were 16x20 inches cut and pasted by hand to make a 15 foot long image. It took 25 years to completely renovate that block, so in 2011 I went back with a digital camera and a perspective correction lens and did it again in a week, revealing all its Disney-Vegas plastic glory. Then this April, I did a third post-covid version. All these will be strung together in pull out pages and blown up details to make a proper book with the whole story behind it. Some fine day somebody else will come along and do it again.

What kind of pictures are you shooting these days?

Since the pandemic I’ve been roaming around my little patch of ground here in the Delta searching for remnants of the cotton plantation life that spawned so many great blues songs and also allowed so many horrific lynchings. It’s called Tuesday’s Just as Bad from a line in T-Bone Walker’s song Stormy Monday. I’m not looking to bring it back in any way, as all that has been mechanized and become agri-biz since WW II. But I am interested in seeing how places look when relative poverty has led to various re-inventions: a bank as a disco, an abandoned rail depot dripping with vines, graffitied rail cars framing a simple house decorated for Christmas. For me there is a great deal of beauty in unexpected places, and my job is simply to leave a record of that.

‍

‍

I recently discovered that you have worked for probably my all time favorite magazine, Nest. What was it like working for Nest? What kind of photos did you get published there?

Joe Holzman, who was the force behind Nest, was an in your face iconoclast. In Europe in the early 20th century he would have been a surrealist or Dada-ist or in some other group whose goal was to counter the banality of petit- bourgeois life. Every generation should have someone like Joe. One memorable shoot was in a woman’s townhouse shared with 140 cats. The ammonia smell burned out my nose hairs for a month. Working with Joe at Nest was a little chaotic because the tone of each issue was never totally clear to contributors like me until it was already at the printer. So you got what you got, which was the point really - you just had to roll with it.

I know you like Scandinavian Noir Crime. Which crime series or movies, or books/ authors would you recommend to people?

Why is that I wonder? It all started for me with “The Bridge” from there to all the Wallander mysteries. Then the Finnish ones and the Polish ones (the most off the wall of all), and some German and Danish offerings too. The why of it might be because I live in the South where they kill you with kindness and politeness and genteel manners unless they’re really upset with you and are coming to kill you literally. But nothing is hidden. In places where it is cold and there is no light maybe the repressed way, operating in secrecy, is how to survive. It must be my fascination with how other people live.

‍