Stephen Clay was born in Los Angeles, CA, in 2002. Clay's career began at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, where he studied filmmaking while working as a music video director, and he later began studying photography at Santa Monica Community College in 2022. Today, he is a photo major at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is building his work and career using the bricks from his past.
Clay's photo work primarily aims to examine the intersections of queerness and blackness, as well as the inherent power dynamics among the subject, the lens, and the audience. With this work, Clay strives to be both an advocate and a surrogate for black queer struggles. Currently, Clay investigates the struggles of working-class americans, mainly narratives of where he was raised, South Central LA.
Clay uses both alternative processing and studio lighting to harken back to the history of photography and how the materials' past is intrinsically tied to racism and colonization. He examines how, historically, people of color have used photography to objectify and liberate the self, while also speaking to the future. Clay's continuous exploration within his referencing of past works, processing techniques, and overall ownership of the medium is not only to use objectification as a way to liberate the self, but also to use it as a referendum of photo history. And in this, to pave the way for ever-evolving narratives on identity and create a two-way relationship to photos, past and present.