Delta Dogs is a a new collection of photographs from Maude Schuyler Clay (Delta Land) that capture the simple, desolate beauty of the Mississippi Delta. This book will be available from UPM in June.
For
the past fifteen years, Clay has been driving the back roads photographing her
native Delta. In the darkroom of her hundred-year-old family homestead in
Sumner, she has developed hundreds of images of eroding architecture, misty
bayous, small stands of woods, endless rows of crops. And dogs.
Maude
has spotted and captured the elemental spirit of dogs eking out existences from
this majestic landscape. In her iconic book Delta
Land, Clay introduced the “Dog in the Fog,” the muscular lab standing watch
in the mist and trees of Cassidy Bayou. This photo became widely recognized,
and Clay wanted to further explore the relationship between the land and the
numerous dogs populating its fields, bayous, and abandoned spaces.
Featuring
70 duotone photographs, Delta Dogs celebrates the canines
who roam this most storied corner of Mississippi. Some of Clay’s photographs
feature lone dogs dwarfed by kudzu-choked trees and hidden among the brambles
adjacent to plowed fields. In others, dogs travel in amiable packs, trotting
toward a shared but mysterious adventure. Her Delta dogs are by turns soulful,
eager, wary, resigned, menacing, contented.
Writers
Brad Watson and Beth Ann Fennelly ponder Clay’s dogs and their connections to
the Delta, speculating about their role in the drama of everyday life and about
their relationships to the humans who share this landscape with them. In a
photographer’s afterword, Clay writes about discovering the beauty of her
native land from within. She finds that the ubiquitous presence of the Delta
dog gives scale, life, and sometimes even whimsy and intent to her Mississippi
landscape.
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| Bank Dogs |
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| Dalmatian Dog |
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| Dog on a Log |
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| Farm Shed Dog |
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| Guard Dog |
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| Noble Dog |
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