Stephen Clay was born in Los Angeles, CA, in 2002. Clay's career began at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts in which he studied filmmaking while actively working as a music video director until he 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 study the intersections between queerness and blackness, as well as the inherent power dynamics between the subject, the lens, and the audience. With this work Clay strives to be both an advocate, but also 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 as a way 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.