Clay Mills is a filmmaker, photographer and writer
Clay Mills is a filmmaker, photographer and writer originally from Texas, now based in Chicago.
To Clay, film lends itself to move like dreams and memory impressions without the need to resort to the cheap tricks of the dream-like, dream and flashback sequences, and the trippy. He believes film is a form that can intuitively make sense while watching it, while — like a dream — loses its sensibility in the act of explanation. This is where “movie magic” lives.
Clay photographs modernity, taking pictures of the “ugly” as if it was “beautiful.” His photos have been derided by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s Curator of Photography as “like Cartier-Bresson taking the decisive moment, but [instead] taking the indecisive moment.”
📷 MY PHOTOS 📷
Clay also works professionally as a cinematographer, editor, gaffer, photographer, and educator in filmmaking.
Clay's hope is that his work is adequate to what Baudelaire tasked us with: to capture, “the fugitive, fleeting beauty of present-day life… often weird, violent, and excessive.”
Education
2021-2024 — School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA in Film/Video/New Media/Animation
2016-2020 — Northwestern University, BFA in Radio, Television, Film, Minor in Slavic Studies
Projects
2025 [forthcoming] — Our Friend Just Died 🎥
2025 [forthcoming] — Heaven’s Like a Frat Party, You Just Gotta Know Someone published by Ephemere Tokyo 📷📖
2025 — Six photo editions with Artists’ Artists
2024 — Destroy the Ring! 📷📖 [booklet]
2024 — My Soul is a Cage on the Outside of My Body — 25:21 🎥
2023 — “day drinking again” by MOTOBOY music video — 1:06 📹
2023 — A Tale of Two Jesses 📷📖 [booklet]
2021 — “富む” by Tomu music video — 5:48 📹
2021 — FILA Girl — 8:24 🎥
2019 — Hotline Misery — 9:40 🎥
2019 — Kissing Show — 3:51, 4:34, 5:14 📹
2018 — The Orifice: He Realized What He Perceived as Choice was Actually Inevitability — 3:09 🎥
Screenings, Exhibitions and Awards
2025 [forthcoming] — Solo show at Filter Photo — Chicago, IL
2024 — Photo exhibited at Arts + Literature Laboratory — Madison, WI
2024 — Photo exhibited at the Museum of the Big Bend — Alpine, TX
2024 — Photos exhibited in Zone Mag’s FETISH Group Show — Vercelli, Italy
2024 — Photo exhibited in Latitude’s Connectivity Group Show — Chicago, IL
2023 — Screening of FILA Girl at Sweet Void Cinema Shorts Festival — Chicago, IL
2023 — Screening of FILA Girl at NPCC Anti-Clout Film Festival — New York City, NY
2022 — SAIC Dean's Grant
2021 — Screening of Hotline Misery and FILA Girl at Clap City Cinema’s DIAL HOME screening event — Chicago, IL
2020 — Irwin Weil Award
2020 — Exhibition of photos in BINGE Group Show — Chicago, IL
2019 — Joann Torretta Award
2019 — Screening of Hotline Misery at Asbury House — Evanston, IL
2018 — RTVF Media Arts Grant
Published Photos
2025 — Photos published in Idle Magazine Issue 1
2025 — Photo published in “Making Something Out of Nothing” in Chicago Reader
2024 — Featured artist on TAGTAGTAG Mag
2024 — Photos published in NOICE Mag
2023 — Photo published in 2023 SAIC Photo Catalog
2020 — Photos published on Nearness Project
Cinematography
2025 — Visitation — film
2025 — Untitled Sublation Media documentary feature
2025 — Mr. Dust feature
2025 — Our Friend Just Died — film
2024 — “Whirlpools” by heyhiBRIA — music video
2024 — Untitled Asher Bentley short
2023 — I Can No Longer Find What Never Existed — film
2021 — One Day Only! — webseries
2021 — Rad Lads Burgers and Fries — film
2021 — FILA Girl — film
2020 — Curse — film
2019 — Hotline Misery — film
2019 — Bravas — film
2019 — Snake — film
2019 — Kissing Show — webseries
2018 — Crushing It — webseries
2018 — Blunderbuss — film
Published Writing, Lectures and Appearances
2024 — “Griftworld” — Essay
2024 — “A Response to Adam Lehrer’s “The Limits of MAGA Art” — Essay in Caesura Magazine
2024 — Text for Real World art exhibition — Seoul, KR
2024 — Retrospective on “The -Cores Doc” — Appearance on Montez Press Radio, New York City
2023 — “Talk on Artist Talks” — Lecture presented at SAIC — Chicago, IL
2023 — “You don’t need a revolution for that: An interview with Louis Menand” — Interview in the Platypus Review
2023 — “Review of Skinamarink” — Essay in Caesura Magazine
2022 — “A Brief Cutaway From Progress” — Transcript of lecture
2022 — “Media and Millennial Runoff” — Essay in Sublation Magazine
2022 — “What is Content?, or are you content with being Content” — Teach-in presented at SAIC
2021 — “Drilling to the -Core of How Trends Live, Die, and Eat Themselves” — Essay in Highsnobiety
2021 — “Digital Filmmaking: Aesthetic Crisis” — Lecture presented at Northwestern University
2020 — “Nightcore and Unkept Promises” — Essay in Chicago Underground Film Fest Website
2020 — “-Cores Doc” — Essay