Eudora Welty,photographer

Abstract

That Eudora Welty¹ in addition to her great gifts as a short-story writer should also have been a gifted photographer may come as something of a surprise. One thinks immediately of Wright Morris², another original writer and photographer, whose interest in the art has continued to this day, whereas photographic activity was only a passing phase for Welty. For a time Eudora Welty thought of becoming a professional photographer, but her early portfolios did not sell, while her short stories did. In 1944 Vogue magazine published three of her pictures with an accompanying text, entitled ‘Literature and the lens’, the first of three statements that she has made on the nature of the photograph and of the moment it preserves³. Her photographs are indeed of One Time, One Place, Mississippi in the Depression; A Snapshot Album to quote the title of a collection of her photographs published with a preface in 1971⁴. A new and sumptuous portfolio of 20 well-printed photographs has since appeared⁵.