Expert Interview: Clay Williams Photographer and Community Builder

May 26, 2025

This interview with a food-writing expert was conducted by Rachel Ciordas. She writes Next Level Gluten Free newsletter and works to make gluten free living more delicious every day. You can see more of her work and subscribe at

Hello friends,

Today, our expert is Clay Williams, a fantastic award-winning photographer with tips and advice we can all use. Throughout our conversation, I noticed that Clay really lit up when we talked about his incredible community building work. He’s such an inspiration. I know you’ll really enjoy this interview!

Rachel

Rachel: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you, and what do you do?

Clay: I am Clay Williams. I am a photographer specializing in food, drink, and hospitality. I am based in Brooklyn, but have photographed all over for, among other folks, the James Beard Foundation, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Travel & Leisure, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit. I won a James Beard Award a few years back.

I am also the co-founder of a group called Black Food Folks, which highlights and promotes community within the black professionals working in and around food and hospitality.

Rachel: Why did you become a photographer?

Clay: I've been interested in photography for a long time. I studied it all through high school, and it became a hobby almost immediately out of college. This was the aughts, and digital cameras were cheap and available, and a lot was happening, especially in Brooklyn.

I started by photographing wherever I went. It was often hanging out at bars and restaurants, but it was also music and art and events and parties. This was the early days of blogs. Some of the local blogs reached out to me about shooting for them and covering whatever the happenings were around Brooklyn. I got my first like permanent beat where I was specifically focused on food in 2009. I was working for a website that focused on lunch food in Midtown Manhattan. It was a good excuse to get out of my office that I hated and take a little extra time to see what the local halal cart guy was doing that was different from the five others within two blocks.

Rachel: Can you tell us more about the organization that you founded, Black Food Folks?

Clay: There was a point in the late teens when I was going to events regularly. I was covering events. I was photographing the James Beard House multiple times a month, and occasionally, I would encounter and work with black chefs or other black journalists or writers within the industry. But it was always sort of few and far between. It was not unusual in 2018 to walk into a food event with 200 people, and there'd be fewer than 10 black people in the room.

I knew the people involved, and there was no malicious intent, but there was always this idea that there just aren't that many black folks in the industry.

My friend and co-founder, Colleen Vincent, who at the time was working at the James Beard Foundation, decided we should get some people together. We wanted to have a little gathering, a happy hour. We'll get some folks together, and instead of introducing each person one by one, we can have them all in the same room and help support each other.

My initial thought of it would be, it would be somewhere in the area of 20 to 30 people and maybe we find the back room of a bar somewhere or a restaurant and, we'd be able to just have a little meet and greet.

By the time it happened a couple of weeks later, we filled the room with over a hundred people, including folks who came from as far as Connecticut and Baltimore and one friend who stopped in, in her layover between Australia and Detroit. It was something everyone was excited about because we all felt like we were the only ones. It turned out that not only weren't we the only ones, there were so many of us.

These days, there are more events, there are more gatherings, there are more organizations, but at the time, there were fewer. We started a series of events, and I put together a newsletter. I called it the Internal Memo of the Black Food Community. It was something I put together to celebrate people's victories and post if there were job openings or announcements, applications for awards.

I haven't done that in quite a while, but I miss that part. It was a big undertaking, but I don't have quite the bandwidth to bring that back. But yeah, I mean, it was one of these things where we were just overlooked for so long as being a small part of the community and a small audience.

I had many food writers say that if they pitch stories to publications about black stories or black community or black culture, that they were in this position where they had to spend the entire time explaining it, explaining context, or putting it in the context of soul food, which is the only niche that, that, that people understood black food to be.

Being able to have conversations within the community and spaces where we could discuss with each other how to deal with it and how we've succeeded around it and that sort of thing. It was gratifying to be a part of that.

When the pandemic happened and everybody was stuck at home and out of work, we started hosting live conversations online. I reached out to the community and put them together on Instagram Lives and in spaces where they could connect not just for the audience but for each other. In the end, we did something along the lines of a little more than 200 live conversations on Instagram.

In that time after the murder of George Floyd, some companies reached out and provided grants and funding, so the first thing we did was turn it around and create a grant program to give it away to other groups and organizations. Our first year, we gave $50,000 in grants. To farming programs and publications, restaurant startups, and a few other types of food and food media-related organizations. In total, it ended up being, I believe, $180,000 over several years.

Rachel: What is happening with the organization now?

Clay: It is still active. Now, other organizations are focusing on some of the things we started out doing. I'm still trying to figure out what the community really needs. We have hosted occasional events for industry folks, and we want to continue that as well.

Rachel: Amazing. What community building!

Rachel: What do you think makes great food photography stand out?

Clay: There's a lot about a sense of place and a sense of context. I don't always think of myself as a food photographer directly as much as a photographer that covers food. I definitely spend a lot of time photographing food, but I spend as much, if not more time with people and with spaces and all of that. So, you know, the super tight shot of here's a dish, here's that food. Is not always my priority as much as telling the story around it.

If I'm thinking about shooting a dish, it's important to telegraph what it's like to eat it. What are the things that are special about it, and what are the flavors involved? What are the textures and how to I show that to the viewer?

Is it crunchy? Is it sweet? I want that part to be as clear as possible visually. Give a little glimpse of what’s in it. Help the viewer understand what a dish is and, and how it tastes and what that experience is like.

Rachel: Representing a full sensory experience visually through visual storytelling is such a great way to think about it. Do you have specific tips for accomplishing that?

Clay: I think in terms of having backgrounds, of having some light and shadows. Have things that give some color, something that bounces off and compliments what's on the plate.

I've been lucky enough to work with some great prop and food stylists who can create those scenes. If there's something that you can do to mix it up and add a feeling, things resonate because we know what something tastes like, or we have a memory of a texture.

You’re never going to be able to offer taste in a photo, but if you’ve got textured pasta or bread, photograph in a way that enhances that; it will remind of a flavor. Show the details because it is just a flat page, right? So much of what we see or read evokes a memory of some sort or an understanding of what something is or what something tastes like, it evokes feelings based on experiences.

Sometimes that can be done not just with the food, but with the context and the background and the story that you're telling. Years ago, I invested in several surfaces and backdrops. They supplement some of the things that we do when we have a prop stylist in for cookbooks.

Use lighting, either lights or, if you have windows, use the natural light at certain times of use the context. Use what you can to evoke something more than every dish in the same space.

Rachel: What does the future hold for you, whether it's photography or community building?

Clay: I want to spend more time working on bringing those two together, and I've been doing that. I’m working on a long-term book project that will be about food and community.

One of the things I've been doing a lot more is traveling a fair amount over the last couple of years, both domestically and internationally, and figuring out ways to connect those our histories and the diaspora. Connecting cuisines of the American south of the black Midwest of the Caribbean, of black South America of West Africa and Southern Africa.

Those are the things that I would like to spend some time on. But I also have worked on some really interesting projects and spaces that aren't my area, traveling nationally and internationally to tell others’ stories.

Clay Williams is a James Beard Award-winning photographer covering food, hospitality, and the people and places that define our culture. For more than 15 years, his camera has taken him on adventures through sugar cane fields in South Louisiana, out on the Mare Piccolo with mussel farmers in Puglia, Italy, on the back roads of Jamaica to eat peppa shrimp and crayfish, and in and out the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants, food trucks, and local gems.

His work has appeared in the pages of Food & Wine, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Travel + Leisure, as well as in several cookbooks including a New York Times Bestseller by the late Gullah Matriarch Ms. Emily Meggett, as well as books by chefs Todd Richards and Kwame Onwuachi. In 2025, we'll see the release of Gursha, highlighting Jewish Ethiopian cuisine and culture, Vegan takes on Jamaican and Mauritian food by musician and host Charlise Rookwood, and Indigenous food by chef Crystal Wahpehpah, among others.

In 2019, Clay co-founded Black Food Folks, a platform for professionals working in food and food media. The organization has provided a space to connect, collaborate, and share stories within the community. From 2020 through 2021, Black Food Folks hosted over 200 live conversations among members of the community and provided over $180,000 in grants to Black-run organizations in food, farming, and food media throughout the country.

If Clay isn't behind the camera, he might be behind the stove cooking at home or out exploring the world, seeking new experiences and stories. He lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with his wife, Tammi Williams, a textile artist and founder of Yarn & Whiskey.

Clay is available for assignments and projects in New York, Philadelphia and across the globe.
Member of @DiversifyPhoto Completed Missouri Photo Workshop 74 - Excelsior Springs.

https://www.claywilliamsphoto.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ultraclay/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/claywilliams/
https://bsky.app/profile/ultraclay.bsky.social

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Expert Interview: Clay Williams Photographer and Community Builder

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