Photos by Marshall Blevins
Remnants and wreckage at the T.Y. Fleming School.
Before I moved to the Delta, before I knew about the necessity of riding around the Delta land just for the sake of it, before I had walked into my first abandoned house, coated in fertile dust, discovering long forgotten, long forsaken clothes, books, photographs—the Clays had seen it, lovingly photographed it, collected, remembered, documented it.
The words come easy because it’s the truth: remembered, documented.
If you go looking for Maude Schuyler Clay, you’ll find a presence that is made up more of images and less of speech. The portraits she makes are reflections: her daughter as a young girl tangled up in mimosa, the same as the blossoms, later playing with kittens on a shining porch in the rich green of summer, three maids standing the same as sentinels in the distance. In every photo there are multiple stories, in the way people in Mississippi talk, “So and so who was married to so and so, well you remember Clara Gray was her grandmother, and that’s where he’s from. He moved back, but I guess he didn’t like it and burned that restaurant down and left.”
The portraits: a man holding a bunch of mustard greens, looking quietly proud and trying not to let on. Another in clean blue coveralls with a plate of ribs in the gloaming, on one knee like it’s an offering, his life’s work. A teen against the wisteria. A woman in the forsythia. Family, friends, strangers. Dogs out in the bayou, protective spirits.
These are the images that created the legend of Mississippi in my mind. I have bought more than one book just because it had a Maude Schuyler Clay image on the front, which to me marked it as Certified Real South Material.
Maude Schuyler Clay
"Bob Wire," by Maude Schuyler Clay
Now, as for Langdon Clay, go looking and you’ll find a whole landscape of images that is hard to quantify; brightly colored buildings in the right light, rain-splashed cars glittering in the big city, globes glowing like gems in a shop window. He describes one series of work “like a stage set with dancers, with a foreground, background, and midfield.”
Together, the Clays’ approach to photography is infused with the sort of skill that makes it look easy, moving from digital to large format and 35mm. The crux, though, is they are always noticing.
The first time I really met the Clays in person, it was out at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero in Clarksdale. Langdon climbed into this boat that was out in the parking lot for display, and Maude stood by taking photos. I realized then that they were not stars beyond human reach, but in fact regular people that were downright friendly.
One Sunday after a rainy weekend, the clouds parted, and the Clays agree to take me riding the roads. I head towards Sumner, a small town with a small town square, still recovering from a recent ice storm. Limbs pile along the side of the road, and some folks are burning all of their tree refuse next to the bayou. It is a leaning towards late-winter golden kind of day, and the redbuds are out in number, promising spring.
The Clays keep their house next to Cassidy Bayou; they lovingly refer to it as Grey Gardens South. It’s a big two-story house and has this remarkable welcoming feeling to it, the wide porch like open arms. The inside is curio cabinet-meets-art museum, and Maude regularly rearranges objects to craft different stories. Their dogs are wonderful greeters, but it is time to hit the road, can’t linger long, can’t even really take all of it in.
Headed south on Highway 49E, the Delta landscape is an embrace of an old friend, a returning of the seasons; the rows prepared for planting season, some with standing water reflecting the blue sky above us, the clouds just recently parted with all the heraldry of a homecoming, a return to the earth after winter’s ice out. Riding with the Clays and our friend and photographer, Ashley Gates, we cover a lot of ground both literally and metaphorically. Politics, of course, some buildings that have recently been razed, Billy Collins and his poetry, the challenge of ekphrastic poems, Maude’s forthcoming book, This Beautiful World.
Photo by Marshall Blevins
Remnants and wreckage at the T.Y. Fleming School.
We arrive at the abandoned T.Y. Fleming School, which closed down around 2010. In traveling the Delta, I have passed this place many times on the way to Greenwood but never stopped. The construction vehicles had been there in the last few passes, but today there was only a grain hopper and piles of cement, bricks, and rubble between two buildings. There is a danger in accepting something as already-gone, and so never stopping to discover anew.
Reflecting on the last time they had stopped here to photograph, Maude replied, “Oh it must’ve been three Valentine’s Days ago.”
She mentions a trunk of letters she found, once belonging to a former teacher. She kept some of the love letters, correspondence to a Freedom Rider who couldn’t return to his lover because “(he) couldn’t live there.” Maude still regrets leaving the trunk of other letters there; but she believed someone must be coming back for them. She couldn’t find the teacher either. The next time she came back, everything had been plowed under.
I climb out of the car, the Clays and Gates already moving towards the building. Langdon hands me a headlamp and asks if any of us want a respirator mask, just in case. Then, he disappears into the shadow-licked building, windows obscured by vines and falling down blinds. Glass and tile crunches beneath our feet. Maude and Gates can be heard exclaiming, “Did you see this?” “Look at this!” Each room holds long-forgotten books, pages of careful handwriting, signs from another time, including “No Child Left Behind.”
Jacorey James wrote on December 4, 2008, “spring–a son comes after weather, summer, rain, back into the trees.” Travonte wrote on August 20, 2008 definitions for rumpled, worried, visible, unusual. Jacorey tells us about a football game on September 11, 2008: “the most exciting thing was we won the game.” He was in 5th grade, and the ruins of the school ask us to hope, if we can bear it.
Graffiti covers some of the chalkboards with provoking text, “Books Burn Easier than Guns” and “Only a Living Planet Can Support Life.”
Langdon finds a fine wooden desk—chipped, pale green—and plans to come back, because even though it’s missing a leg, “I have a leg that will fit it perfectly back at home.” Maude finds a small orange child’s chair, which she is excited to add to the collection. The origins of the stories and curios in the house emerge; a personal museum of found treasures.
We cross pass the ruins, and Maude laments the destruction. When asked about why she photographs what she does, she says, “It’s leaving a record of something that you think is important.” The portraits of family and friends, the buildings long gone, the trunk of letters plowed under. Glimpses of heart and humanity that if not frozen in time would already have been forgotten. A bluejay laughs from the trees, and we walk down the breezeway towards what appears to be the school building for younger children. It’s easy to picture kids jumping off the bus with too-big backpacks, rushing to class and hearing the jays cackling on bright and chilly spring mornings.
We enter the cavernous, dripping, building, shouting into the dark for Langdon, who has been unseen for fifteen minutes. Maude assures, “He’s fine.” They’ve done this before, they’ve done this for decades. After entering and examining the first room, she exclaims, “I don’t know if I can bear it!”
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Photos by Langdon Clay, courtesy of the artist.
Remnants and wreckage at the T.Y. Fleming School.
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We turn back towards the sunshine, but from within the building rings another shout of “Did you see this?” Spacemen painted on the walls ask you to launch into reading. Political graffiti, a bleeding spray-painted Confederate flag. Beginner’s reading and science books fan the floor. Watercolor pans, plastic coins for learning to count change. The roof is leaking, and the whole building emanates a tearful spirit, of children joyfully educated, and of a building without a future.
The tripods and headlamps, cameras, the new chair, and a bag of dice find room in the back of their car. We ride east across the highway towards Minter City, which used to be a thriving village. The artists point out where another schoolhouse that once was, and we drive by some cotton mill buildings. This is when it really strikes me, as we all stare in awe of both the buildings and the river, calling it by its name, Tallahatchie. The Clays are wide-eyed still with curiosity and noticing, attention. This is the thing that makes an artist, and despite living and looking in the Delta together since the eighties, they still witness marvels. They still collect stories.
Riding back north on 49 towards home, the fields pass in a blur, and the tales continue to bubble up. I ask if they have been out to Meek’s place recently. And they talk about the murals painted inside the walls, wondering if they’ll hold up to time, if they’re still there. A painter showed up one day and in exchange for a place to stay, he painted the history of Tallahatchie County in a frieze across the walls, “Audubon-level detail,” says Maude. I want to know next about the Baby Doll House down near Benoit. They correct me almost in unison—“The Burrus House.” “We were out there before they restored it,” says Langdon. “Little horse heads poking out of the floor.” Talking about a gift to give a friend, Langdon mentions “I have a mummified rat. I take it out sometimes and make photos of it.” The histories range across the length and width of the Delta, the legends yet fully excavated. But they’ve done the work in making photos, worth thousands of words.
We return to Sumner and pile out, and Langdon mentions picking out photographs for the story we’re telling now. I tell him I imagine he has better taste than I do. He says, “It’s difficult, especially when they’re your own photographs, because you were there, so they mean something more to you. You need an outside eye to help.”
The Clays’ eye for the Mississippi Delta has brought outside eyes in, from across the world, to witness their tender view of their place that they call home.
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See more of the Clays’ work at maudeclay.com & langdonclay.com.
