August 26, 2025
There’s a special feeling that comes with arriving somewhere late at night — when you can’t quite get a sense of where you are until the sun rises. That’s what it felt like pulling up to Maudie and Lang Clay’s house in Sumner, Mississippi — the home Maudie lovingly refers to as Grey Gardens South. It’s like a present waiting to be unwrapped in the morning.
When I arrive, they’re ready for bed. Maudie says they are normally night owls but they are tired tonight. I’ve had a long drive from Athens. I’m exhausted, yet totally wound up at the same time. Lang mentions he’ll be heading out around 5 a.m. to chase a sunrise he’s been thinking about. There is a bridge that he has been photographing with his 4x5 view camera, and he needs early morning light. Maudie says that she “will show her face around 9 a.m.” Her Mississippi cadence makes me feel woozy. If she would, I would have her read me to sleep at night.
The three of us have met before. We’re all photographers whose work is represented by Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. Earlier this year, we were chatting at a JFA opening for their friend Sally Mann and our conversation turned to fashion. Though the couple moved back to Sumner shortly after their first child, daughter Anna, was born in 1986, they met and lived together in New York City for more than a decade — an experience which fed Maudie’s passion for couture, inherited from her mother, who was once a hat model for Hattie Carnegie. Maudie relishes talking about designers and the pieces she has collected through the years as the couple’s projects have taken them to Paris, Barcelona, Marseille, London, and other major cities. We remarked how Southern artists were exploding on the international fashion scene (as we spoke, Marietta, Georgia, native Tyler Mitchell was photographing the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”).
Then it hit me. How cool would it be to bring together some of our region’s stylish creatives — from established stars like Billy Reid to young innovators like textile designer Shana Jackson — for a fashion shoot? Better yet, the Clays could be our models, in their own historic home. They loved the idea, too.
While in NYC, Maudie worked as a photographer and photo editor for Vanity Fair, Esquire, and other magazines. Her fine art is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, and many others. Lang is a native New Yorker, whose photographs have also been published by top publications. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert, the Getty, and more.
My expectations were high.
That first night, my hosts promise there’ll be coffee in the morning and invite me to roam the house freely. Roam I do. I want to know every inch of this magical place.
Everywhere I look, there are collections — hand sculptures, silver trays, ceramic fruit, turtle figurines, family photos, taxidermy animals dressed up in adorable tiny hats and scarves.
The kitchen walls are covered with those hand-painted Southern signs people often overlook — the ones that promise Heaven but also promise Hell. There is a sign warning against the effects of TV. There are signs for the Purple Rain Lounge and the Cheetah Club. So. Many. Signs. Maudie and Lang claim they’ve “liberated” these signs as a type of historic preservation.
With all of the nooks and crannies filled with ephemera, collections, and wonders, the iron staircase in the center of the house, and personal histories overflowing from every corner, I understand why Maudie has nicknamed this eccentric clapboard house — built by her grandfather, Joseph Albert May — after the infamous East Hampton mansion in the unforgettable 1970s documentary. I am already trying to find ways not to leave, or reasons to return.
Maudie in archival Megan Huntz dress. Lang in a Tibi shirt with trousers and shoes by Billy Reid and sunglasses by Vada.
ALWAYS THE LIGHT
—
The light in the Mississippi Delta isn’t just light — it has presence. It is its own character. It’s as essential to this story as Maudie, Lang, or the designers themselves. Eggleston made it famous, and now I am wrapped up in it. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my travels. It’s thick, golden, sometimes dusty, sometimes silver, always nostalgic. It shapes everything it touches. It’s specifically Southern. Mississippi Delta Southern.
Maudie in imogene + willie jacket and skirt with silk tie by Megan Huntz. Lang in imogene + willie jacket and Billy Reid shirt, trousers, and shoes. Maudie in Alabama Chanin jacket and pants, Susan Hable earrings, and shoes by Fendi from her personal wardrobe. Both are wearing Vada sunglasses.
DETAILS
—
Propped along the edge of the table is a framed image I immediately recognize — Maudie’s portrait of her cousin and mentor, William Eggleston. It was the frontispiece for a book on Eggleston published by the National Portrait Gallery in London. She calls it one of her “greatest hits.” Eggleston is standing before a staircase that looks exactly like the one in front of me now. The staircase that Maudie’s mother installed in the ’60s. For a moment, I think I’m standing in that very spot — until I remember this photograph was made in Memphis.
The detail sticks with me.
It reminds me that Maudie and Lang, like me, root their work in the familiar. They revisit the same places year after year, treating the everyday as something sacred. They transform ordinary things — kitchens, porches, staircases, cars, abandoned buildings, their own children — into art. Of course Maudie would photograph her famous cousin in front of a staircase that mirrors her mother’s. She would immediately be drawn to the visual familiarity.
The house has been in Maudie’s family for 114 years. She is the third generation to be named Minnie Maude May. Its undeniable pull is why she returned to Sumner, population 250, though it is located in a place infamous for the murder of Emmett Till, not to mention the daily transgressions of segregation and servitude. She is painfully aware of her region’s apathy, if not cruelty. Both she and Lang have served on a commission that erected memorials and historical markers for Till, and their work doesn’t pull punches. But some roots won’t let go.
Christopher John Rogers dress courtesy of ByGeorge, Austin, Texas, with Susan Hable Love Knot necklace and earrings. The additional necklace was Maudie’s grandmother’s. Among the trinkets, Maudie’s photograph of her daughter: “Sophie with Bubblegum and Ishmael, Sumner, MS 2003.”
VIGNETTES
—
I wander into the formal dining room, where Maudie’s often-published portraits of their daughters hang. It’s also her current studio space for a series of ceramic fruit vignettes. From there, the house opens into the heart of the couple’s creative world — a massive wooden farm table covered in Maudie’s prints, negatives, press clippings, books, inspirations. It’s chaos and order in equal measure. A stack of yellow Kodak negative boxes, haphazardly labeled, catches my eye. They look so much like my own photo boxes back home, little piles of intent and memory. I feel some camaraderie noticing that someone else labels their boxes like I do — “important negatives” — without remembering to mark why they are important. I love these stacks of yellow boxes. I am nostalgic for contact sheets, negatives, C-prints.
The first picture I snap is of those boxes. One of them has “Harper Lee” scribbled on it. I have to remember to ask Maudie about that. Has she photographed the reclusive Harper Lee?
RED
—
The entire kitchen pulses with red. Red everywhere. Red chairs, red floors, red appliances. Unintentionally — or maybe serendipitously — red becomes a visual thread throughout the entire shoot.
On the table there is a small vase of blossoms from Maudie’s New Dawn Rose. The ballet shoe pink is a perfect contrast to all of the red in the room. I can’t believe something so tiny and delicate could smell so intoxicating. The rose climbs impressively outside the kitchen window. Maudie will tell me later that she is proud that she hasn’t killed it.
Lang plays a live Dylan recording — his favorite version of a favorite song, “Ballad of a Thin Man.” He talks about Dylan with such reverence, analyzing the pacing of the performance. He explains that this version is the slowest that he has ever heard. He says it was recorded on January 7, 1974 in Philadelphia. He says he pictures this song as having been written about Andy Warhol’s Factory. He pictures all of these eccentric characters hanging out when “in walks this suit” totally out of his element. I am reminded of my dear, deceased friend Jeremy Ayers. Before he returned home to become a mentor to all of Athens’ young creatives — most notably Michael Stipe — Jeremy was a fixture at Warhol’s Factory. His moniker was Sylva Thinn. I think to myself, What if this beloved Dylan song was actually about Jeremy in some way?
Leather jacket and boots by Savas and coat by Alabama Chanin. Jeans and bandana by imogene + willie.
TRUCULENT
—
Lang tells me about seeing the same Dylan show at Madison Square Garden later that same January. He described the song as staccato, rushed, truculent. He still has the cassette of the bootleg recording he made in 1974. I wish I had my cassettes from the ’80s and ’90s. I also want to remember to use the word truculent in a sentence soon.
The second morning, I wake early to join as he pursues the dawn in his candy-red VW Beetle. Lang’s Beetle makes me reach for my phone to text my daughter “punch buggy — no punch backs!” — a game we always play, but I’ve left my phone behind. Deliberately. I don’t want the distraction. It feels like a small act of freedom, a gift to myself.
Lang uses the Alabama Chanin Morrow coat as a dark cloth with his 4x5 viewfinder camera while photographing the bridge. The light is perfect. He gets his shot. I get my shots of him getting his shot. He wears a gorgeous blue green Savas leather jacket and boots with imogene + willie denim jeans. His look brings to mind Sam Shepard in one of Patti Smith’s poems.
Maudie in Alabama Chanin and Vada sunglasses.
CHARACTER
—
It’s Maudie’s turn for pictures.
Maudie is a movie star in the Christopher John Rogers bodycon dresses. She is a chic influencer in Tibi joggers with her Leica in hand. She is an avant-garde diva in Shana Jackson’s one-of-a-kind art piece from a series called “Jumprope Antiquity.”
Every piece of clothing seems to unlock a different part of her. She doesn’t just wear them — she inhabits them. She steps into character.
Maudie and Lang aren’t just subjects — they are muses. They know how to be in front of a camera because they know what it means to be behind one. They know how to play.
This is one of my favorite shoots in decades.
Lang in Alabama Chanin jacket and Maudie in Savas coat.
ORDINARY
—
At the end of our day, Maudie and I watch the sunset over Cassidy Bayou from the porch — the place where she and Lang were married, and where the iconic portrait of her father, Adyn, and his friend, Jasper Staples, was taken by her cousin, William Eggleston. It’s titled “Sumner, MS, 1969.” The men are leaning against a white car that is parked on the bayou bank. According to Maudie, the car almost rolled into the water right after the picture was snapped.
Maudie has taken up Eggleston’s legacy: elevating the ordinary. It’s a thread that ties them together — the belief that what is familiar is worthy of attention, of framing, of reverence.
I keep thinking about how deeply we are pulled toward what we know. It’s almost a need, a compulsion, to make others feel what we feel when we look at people and places. To ask the world, “Do you see it, too?”
Maudie in imogene + willie shirt, jacket, and jeans styled with electra eggleston + agnés b floral shirt, Susan Hable earrings, and Vada sunglasses. Shoes, Gucci from Maudie’s personal wardrobe.
TRANSFORMED
—
Maudie wants to wear a blouse designed by William Eggleston’s daughter, Andra. She effortlessly ties it up like a halter top with her imogene + willie jeans and Vada sunglasses. She pulls a pair of Gucci heels off the mantle. She displays them like sculpture. They are from the days of when Alessandro Michele was designing for the house and feel like high art. Her daughter Sophie gave them to her.
The print on the blouse is from one of Eggleston’s abstract drawings that Andra turned into a textile and transformed into something wearable through a collaboration with agnés b. I notice the porch pillows are in the same pattern. Maudie pointed them out — they are from Andra’s brand, too: electra eggleston.
Lang is in Tibi with a Megan Huntz silk tie and sunglasses by Vada. Maudie in Tibi joggers and shoes with Megan Huntz silk tie and sunglasses by Vada.
THE DESIGNERS
—
The dresser in my room holds precious wedding pictures and little ceramic trays from various hotels around the world. There is a beautiful mirror. I take a selfie in that mirror. I need the picture to make me feel rooted.
My room overflows with boxes sent by designers for this shoot. Unpacking them feels like Christmas morning. Every garment is stunning. Every designer, regardless of where they’re located now, is connected to this region. The land runs through their work. The word that kept coming up when I approached them about photographing the Clays was iconic.
The roster is a dream: Alabama Chanin, a Florence, Alabama–based designer often has her handmade, “slow fashion” designs featured in Vogue. Nashville’s Savas creates a luxurious line of leather jackets and boots recently picked up by Bergdorf Goodman. (Jason Isbell is a fan and wore her red leather boots for his cover story in this magazine.) Billy Reid, also based in Florence, has won the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund’s Menswear Designer of the Year Award — while Christopher John Rogers, originally from Baton Rouge, has won four CFDA awards in three different categories. Athens-based Susan Hable, long known for her textile designs and fine art paintings, recently launched a jewelry line that was featured in T Magazine, a fashion and style imprint of the New York Times Magazine. Nashville denim designers imogene + willie are firmly committed to producing their designs in the U.S., as is Atlanta-based Megan Huntz, who is known for her modern silk dresses and separates. Amy Smilovic, founder of New York and St. Simons Island-based Tibi, embraces “creative pragmatism” with her luxury, ready to-wear brand. Vada, named after designer Katie Caplener’s grandmother, is an Austin, Texas-based brand whose sunglasses are as colorful and happy as a bowl of candy. Shana Jackson is a textile design student at the University of Georgia in my hometown of Athens. Her one-of-a-kind garment made of white rope took my breath away.
Antiquity Rope Gown from Shana Jackson’s series “Jump Rope Antiquity” with Tibi shoes. Silk dress and tights from Maudie’s personal wardrobe.
Christopher John Rogers dress courtesy of ByGeorge in Austin, Texas, and Savas coat.
FLORES
—
Maudie and I stay up talking at the kitchen table. We drink bubble water and wine and trade stories about love, about difficult friendships and the ones that saved us, about becoming photographers and living in New York, about the men we’ve loved and still carry somewhere inside.
We’ve walked many of the same roads. We pore over her new book just like we did Lang’s — turning each page slowly, reverently. The subjects in her photos feel like old friends. I know these people from her earlier work. They've aged and evolved. The children are adults now. Some are having kids of their own. A new generation of love, seen through Maudie’s eye.
Her images are quiet, clear, deeply familiar. Not just to her, but to anyone who’s ever been in love with a place, or a person, or a fleeting version of themselves.
New books are coming from both photographers soon. We need this kind of work right now. It reminds us of what’s real, of what we need to nurture and protect — even in a world that feels increasingly broken. Maudie and Lang may not have found redemption here, or even reconciliation. But they have found their way to beauty and hope.
Maudie and I bond over fragrance. We talk about the connection of scent to visual and visceral memory — how certain smells can transport you back through time to a past love or childhood or a specific room in a specific house with a specific light.
Maudie’s scent is Flores, a fragrance from Portuguese perfumer Aqua dos Açores, which she layers with other notes. It’s never exactly the same twice, and yet always unmistakably her. Each morning, I smell her before I see her. As I prepare to leave, Maudie hands me a precious little bottle of Flores.
It’s her way of sending herself home with me. I am reminded of E.E Cummings: “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart).”
Three days ago, I arrived in the dark, unsure of where I was. I leave illuminated. ◊
Christy Bush is a fine art and fashion photographer living in Athens, Georgia. She is known for her whimsical, intimate, and joyful approach to her subjects. Her work has been shown in New York, Paris, Japan, and Atlanta. Recent publications include Fat Magazine (Denmark), Lovewant (Australia), and Index (New Zealand).
