Eudora Welty, Keep Off Grass, 1935-36, printed later. Gelatin print on Ilford paper. 13 1/2 x 18 in. Signed lower right.
Eudora Welty, Saturday Off, Jackson, Mississippi, negative 1935; printed 1997. From the series Home Places: 5 Photographs by Eudora Welty. Gelatin silver print on paper.
Eudora Welty (1909 - 2001)
Eudora Welty is one of Mississippi’s best-known writers, but her earliest creative achievement is in the field of photography. Welty’s strength during her short tenure as a photographer was her ability to capture real moments in life, snapping the shutter so that an entire story was revealed in an instant. To this day, her work captivates us.
Traveling across Mississippi as a WPA junior publicity agent afforded Welty the opportunity to take snapshots of her state and to understand, as she puts it, the “real State of Mississippi, not the abstract state of the Depression.” In her publication of photographs One Time, One Place, Welty notes that she was “well positioned… moving through the scene openly and yet invisibly because I was part of it, born into it, taken for granted.” It is this aspect of familiarity, and sometimes camaraderie, with her subjects that sets her photographs apart from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers hired to document rural poverty as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. With these pictures, Welty had no such politically-driven agenda.
Though she did not necessarily show a preference towards women as her subjects (all Mississippians were fair game in front of her Kodak), some of Welty’s most iconic photographs feature women, many of whom appear strong, independent, and at ease. Whether she realized it or not, the bond of community and the quiet moments of daily life are poignant reminders that the Depression was not all despair, and the candid way she framed her compositions speaks to a level of comfort between Welty and her subjects that was perhaps lacking in the work of the FSA photographers. Furthermore, her depictions of women, particularly African Americans, are important records from that era that combat stereotypes of poverty and racial characterization.
Welty’s compassion towards fellow Mississippians offers an important perspective to an otherwise bleak decade in the state’s history. She chronicled moments in women’s lives that ultimately transcend the typical image of miserable poverty facing much of the nation in the 1930s, and their impact can still be felt. Themes of motherhood, community, and self-agency are powerful reminders of our shared history and offer a tangible connection to the past. When understood in this context, images of joy, pride, beauty, and even leisure become meaningful narratives in both her time and ours.
-Excerpt from “Eudora Welty’s Women,” a traveling exhibition organized by Elizabeth Abston for the Mississippi Museum of Art.