The Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience will host The Beautiful Mysterious World of Color Photography, a conversation between photographer Maude Schuyler Clay and Ralph Eubanks beginning at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

 

Schuyler Clay and Eubanks will be discussing the photography of MAX Hall of Fame members William Eggleston and William Ferris, and the ways that their legacies are inspiring new generations of Mississippi creatives.

 

Until Eggleston’s landmark 1976 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, color photography was not considered art. A Mississippian–and his gaze–changed that, earning him the moniker “The Father of Color Photography,” and a place in The MAX Hall of Fame for shaping the genre and the generations who have followed in his footsteps.

 

Eggleston’s longtime friend and fellow MAX Hall of Fame member, folklorist William Ferris, began collecting Eggleston’s photographs in 1962; that collection has been featured in the book, “The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston.”

 

The evening will begin with a screening of “The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston,” a documentary short by Kate Medley and Jesse Paddock. In this film, Medley introduces audiences to William Eggleston, his work, and the world he has created through color photography.

 

Following the film, Maude Schuyler Clay and Ralph Eubanks will be in conversation with the audience about the relationships between these icons of Mississippi’s cultural legacy, and their impacts on young filmmakers and photographers, like Kate Medley.

 

Like any good Mississippi story, these storytellers are closely related in myriad, complex ways.

 

Maude Schuyler Clay is a photographer whose work is prominently featured in larger-than-life installations at The MAX. Born and raised in Sumner, Schuyler Clay is the niece and former assistant to William Eggleston. She began making color portraits in 1975. Since then, her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the High Museum of Art, and at The MAX, in Southbound. Her books include “Delta Land,” “Delta Dogs,” and “Mississippi History.”

 

W. Ralph Eubanks is a scholar and fellow at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi—founded by Ferris. His Oxford American essay, “Color is Everywhere, about the photography of William Eggleston” interweaves Eggleston’s story with that of Ferris. Eubanks is the author of “A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape;” “Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past;” and “The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South.”

 

If a photograph is worth 1,000 words, Eubanks and Schuyler Clay have collaborated so many times that they’ve created their own alternate economy, bartering photographs for words. Not only is Eubanks a contributor to “The Beautiful Mysterious,” but his forthcoming book, “When It’s Darkness on the Delta: An American Reckoning” and recent article for Outside Magazine feature photographs by Schuyler Clay. Likewise, Schuyler Clay’s forthcoming book, “Maude Schuyler Clay: This Beautiful World” includes text by Eubanks.

 

Following the conversation, Eubanks and Schuyler Clay will be available to sign copies of their books, which are available at The MAX Store.

 

The Beautiful Mysterious World of Color Photography is presented in conjunction with The MAX’s current exhibition, “Thank You, Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South”–a selection of 25 photographs by Kate Medley from her award-winning book of the same title. Admission is free.