Rating: 
Summary: Delta Land recalls decay and loss with beauty
Review: It has been said that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. This evokes a hearty laugh or two. But Maude Schuyler Clay's Delta, this land of her black and white photograph collection, bears little humor at all.Clay, the contributing photographer for The Oxford American (the nearly defunct glossy southern literary magazine) is a Sumner County, Mississippi, native. Back to the Delta to live and work after a decade in New York City, Clay combines landscapes, or the Delta flatscape, with the stark loneliness of the occasional roadside dog. Few humans don the pages of Delta Land. Mississippi writer Lewis Nordan, a Delta native himself, writes a provocative and interpretive introduction to the book, one that is witty and piercing in its critical and story-like style. The book's sepia-toned landscapes show the one constant in a region dominated for millennia by the mighty Mississippi River. That constant is erosion. Many of the photos recall decay and loss. Such is the depiction of the Tallahatchie Bridge of Billy Joe McAllister's jump to the depths below. This coffee table book, a collection of minimalist and postmodern art, promises to deliver a true, honest, dispassionate and yet emphatic view of the Delta for all who read its words and view its pictorial depictions. The book, not far removed from the documentary eye of Walker Evans, is about memory and the hard, melancholic road that memory often takes us. I recommend it for all who love or long for the land it memorializes. ---------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman
Rating:
Summary: Delta Land recalls decay and loss with beauty
Review: It has been said that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. This evokes a hearty laugh or two. But Maude Schuyler Clay's Delta, this land of her black and white photograph collection, bears little humor at all. Clay, the contributing photographer for The Oxford American (the nearly defunct glossy southern literary magazine) is a Sumner County, Mississippi, native. Back to the Delta to live and work after a decade in New York City, Clay combines landscapes, or the Delta flatscape, with the stark loneliness of the occasional roadside dog. Few humans don the pages of Delta Land. Mississippi writer Lewis Nordan, a Delta native himself, writes a provocative and interpretive introduction to the book, one that is witty and piercing in its critical and story-like style. The book's sepia-toned landscapes show the one constant in a region dominated for millennia by the mighty Mississippi River. That constant is erosion. Many of the photos recall decay and loss. Such is the depiction of the Tallahatchie Bridge of Billy Joe McAllister's jump to the depths below. This coffee table book, a collection of minimalist and postmodern art, promises to deliver a true, honest, dispassionate and yet emphatic view of the Delta for all who read its words and view its pictorial depictions. The book, not far removed from the documentary eye of Walker Evans, is about memory and the hard, melancholic road that memory often takes us. I recommend it for all who love or long for the land it memorializes. ---------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman
Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly beautiful rendition of the Mississippi Delta
Review: Maude Schuyler Clay delivers in this stunningly cohesive rendition of her "native soil" a body of work which will echo in our hearts and minds for many years to come. Unlike some other photographers who have recently focused their lens on this landscape, Clay offers an unsentimental straight forward look at the homeland she so obviously loves. There is a directness to the images which are supported by her subtle complex compositions. This is a view of this area that is so familiar yet so originally fresh as delivered here. I highly recommend this book and I have many!
Rating: 
Summary: DELTA LAND
Review: The book is now available and I am very pleased with it. Anyone who is curious about the Delta will, I hope, like this 6 year effort. I welcome any and all comments. Maude Schuyler Clay 11/l0/99
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