Langdon Clay – A Fine Mississippi Delta Photographer

Cover: Year of Our Lord – Faith, Hope and Harmony in the Mississippi Delta

CLARKSDALE, Mississippi

“A fine photographer is just someone who hones in on something that they really care about–something that attracts them or catches their eye.” – Langdon Clay

Lang is just that–a fine Mississippi Delta photographer.

Photographer Clay and writer T. R. Pearson recently collaborated on a new book. Title: Year of Our Lord. Subtitle: Faith, Hope and Harmony in the Mississippi Delta. As quoted on Mockingbird Publishing’s website about the new book, published October 2010, please read the following then order the book! Also, follow the above link to Mockingbird Publishing’s website about the book and watch the videos. They are wonderful!

Lucas McCarty lives in the Mississippi Delta. He is the only white congregant in the African-American Trinity House of Prayer Holiness church. Lucas is bereft of the ability to speak due to cerebral palsy, yet he sings there in the church choir. Thus is the subject of Year of Our Lord, a portrait of courage, acceptance and grace, rendered in the lyrical prose of T.R. Pearson and the haunting photographs of Langdon Clay.

Year of Our Lord is a visual journey, exploring one of the poorest parts of the American South, a place that economic progress has left behind. And it is a spiritual journey, a revelation of a community that has replaced the hope for earthly prosperity with an abundance of faith in God and the life beyond. The Delta’s is a culture that can look upon Lucas and say, “God doesn’t make a mistake.” It is a place that in the face of abject poverty can proclaim, life offers “too much joy!”

Year of Our Lord, then, is an opportunity to see into another’s world, and to embrace the best of it.

What Folks Are Saying:

“It is a wonderful human story, deftly written and Langdon’s photography is so evocative it makes me homesick. A wonderful read, especially for those with roots in the Miss’ippi Delta.” — Morgan Freeman

“Tom Pearson’s unlikely journey into the troubled soul of the Mississippi Delta yields a story filled with compassion, tolerance, and hope.  His travel mate is Lucas McCarty, a 21 year-old white boy damaged at birth. Lucas can’t speak but is always welcome in the choir of a black Pentecostal church where he is accepted without reservation.  Author and subject form a unique friendship, one captured not only in Pearson’s elegant prose but also in the extraordinary photography of Langdon Clay.” — John Grisham

About the Authors:

T.R. Pearson is the author of a dozen novels, including A Short History of a Small Place and Blue Ridge, and four works of nonfiction. He lives in Virginia.

Langdon Clay was born in New York City and raised in New England. He photographs around the country and beyond for shelter magazines and coffee table books. The bulk of his commercial work involves architecture, interiors, gardens and food, featured in such publications as Jefferson’s Monticello by Howard Adams and From My Chateau Kitchen by Anne Willan. His art photography can be found in museums in Paris, London, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and Jackson, Mississippi. He resides on the banks of Cassidy Bayou in the little Delta town of Sumner, Mississippi, with his wife, photographer Maude Schuyler Clay, and three mostly grown children; Anna, Schuyler, and Sophie.

Remember….Support your Mississippi Delta Artists.

Year of Our Lord – Faith, Hope, and Harmony in the Mississippi Delta. Photograph by Langdon Clay