In conjunction with the special exhibition Maude Schuyler Clay: Portraits of a Place, please join us for a conversation between Clay and acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. These long-time friends come together for a special evening to discuss their individual photography practice and subject matter, and to explore how their work was shaped by their environment—both their immediate surroundings, as well as the larger regions of the South in which they both grew up.
This event is free with exhibition admission, but students (K-college, with ID) are also free.
About the Artists
Maude Schuyler Clay (born in Greenwood, Mississippi, 1953) and attended the University of Mississippi, the Institution Allende in Mexico, and the Memphis Academy of Arts in Tennessee. She began her photography career in Memphis apprenticing with American photographer William Eggleston, a cousin and widely considered the father of modern color photography. In the 1980s, she moved to New York City and worked as a photography editor for Esquire, Fortune, Vanity Fair, and other publications. Clay served as photography editor for Oxford American magazine from 1998 to 2002. She currently resides in her hometown of Sumner, Mississippi, where her family has lived for generations. Winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters photography award on five occasions, Clay has published three books, Delta Land (1999), Delta Dogs (2014), and Mississippi History (2015). Her work is in the collections of High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; and, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Sally Mann (born in Lexington, Virginia, 1951) is one of America’s most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Her many books include At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994), What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), Proud Flesh (2009), The Flesh and the Spirit (2010), Remembered Light (2016) and Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings (2018). In 2001 Mann was named “America’s Best Photographer” by Time magazine. A 1994 documentary about her work, Blood Ties, was nominated for an Academy Award and the feature film, What Remains, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2008. Her bestselling memoir, Hold Still (Little, Brown, 2015), received universal critical acclaim, and was named a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2016 Hold Still won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The National Gallery of Art presented a critically lauded show, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings, in 2018. Comprised of 109 prints and several videos, A Thousand Crossings addresses complex issues relating to the American South and will travel internationally until the beginning of 2020. Mann is represented by Gagosian Gallery, New York. She lives in Virginia.
Sally Mann image by Maude Schuyler Clay
Maude Schuyler Clay (b. 1953), Erasing Sally Mann fragments, clothes installation, collection of the artist.
