Basil Edwin Clemons was born July 22, 1887 in Lauderdale County, Alabama to Lemuel Joseph and Sarah Alice Clemmons. (Clemmons family members found that official documents list the name with two m’s although Basil spelled it with only one.) The family moved to Ridgeway, Texas while Clemons was a child. In 1903, at age sixteen, he left for California. He witnessed the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, learned photography in Hollywood, and trooped with the Tom Mix Wild West Show. Around 1909 Clemons drifted to Alaska where he photographed gold mining camps, Alaska Natives, including Eskimos, and dogsled races. While in Alaska, he joined the U.S. Army and trained at Fort Liscom, Alaska. He is listed in the 1917-1918 Polk’s Alaska-Yukon Gazetteer as a professional photographer and resident of Ruby, Alaska. After his army discharge in 1918, he moved to Seattle, Washington and established a photograph studio.

After receiving word that his Seattle studio was destroyed by fire, he headed toward the oil boomtown of Breckenridge, Stephens County, Texas. There he photographed the oil fields, the town and its surrounding communities. Blindness and other health problems ended his career in 1949.

Clemons lived and developed his photographs in a gypsy wagon without benefit of running water or electricity. ...Clemons utilized some techniques largely unknown to the photographic profession. In 1936 he turned down an offer from Eastman Kodak Company for his process for color developing. The collection contains only a few examples of his color prints which are now badly faded. Basil Clemons died June 22, 1964, in Breckenridge and is buried beside his parents in Hopkins County, Texas. [by Shirley Rodnitzky, Archivist, Special Collections Division, Univ. of Texas at Arlington. Sources: Doodle Bugs & Cactus Berries by Betty Elliott Hanna, 1975, and biographical sketch by Jean Ann Pellizzari Credicott, daughter of Frank Pellizzari, Jr., former assistant to Clemons.]