The New Yorker: Mississippi History Book Signing

The New Yorker, "Above and Beyond," December 9, 2015

Maude Schuyler Clay has been photographing friends and family in her native Mississippi Delta for four decades. Her first cousin William Eggleston was a pioneering color photographer in the nineteen-seventies. (Their grandfather, Joseph Albert May, passed the passion down when the two were in their teens.) These deep roots anchor Clay’s photography, which is full of symbolism and transparent affection for her subjects, who are embedded in their environments but never inundated by them. The work was relatively unknown, until Eggleston shared it with Gerhard Steidl, who immediately signed on to publish a collection. Clay’s portraits, shot throughout the eighties and nineties, are gathered in “Mississippi History,” along with a forward by the novelist Richard Ford; both will attend this signing. (20 W. 55th St. 212-691-9100. Dec. 9 at 6.)

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