Maude Schuyler-Clay: Mississippi History

Maude Schuyler Clay started her color portrait series Mississippi History in 1975 when she came upon her first Rolleiflex 21/4 camera. At the time, she was living and working in New York and paid frequent visits to her native Mississippi Delta whose landscape and people continued to inspire her. Over the next twenty-five years, the project, which began as The Mississippians, evolved in part as an homage to Julia Margaret Cameron, a definitive pioneer of the art of pho - tography. Cameron lived in Victorian England and began her photographic experiments in 1863. Clay’s expressive, allegori - cal portraits of her friends, family and other Mississippians, as well as her artful approach to capturing the essence of light, are the driving forces behind her recollection of moments of family life in Mississippi in the 1980s and ‘90s.