The photography of Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty is a writer most people are not familiar w/ these days. One of the most celebrated writers to come from the American South, I learned only today that she was also a photographer. The first link has some information on her and her life, and features some symbolic and mysterious imagery (surely Mardi Gras) that is not in the second link. I found the biography not nearly as interesting as her photographs.

She was awarded a Pullitzer Prize for her writing, and was the first living author to have their work published by the Library of America. A multiple winner of the O. Henry Awards, she was also a recipient of the National Book Award, and was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur of the French government. Not bad for a poor gal from my home state of Mississippi.

I'd always assumed she was Black from her stories, but it seems she was White. Most of her photography was done w/ MF cameras using film packs. These images are pretty striking, and her ability to deeply understand humanity is readily apparent, not only in her prose, but in these photographs as well.

That's very interesting that some software was named after her, wow. She and Flannery O'Conner were amazingly gifted writers who often fly under the radar nowadays.

I saw an exhibition of her work at The Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida A dozen years ago. They were good quality prints of mostly rural and small town settings - kind of typical of the time. They were good, I was impressed, but I don’t have a memory of any one of them in particular.

Interesting

Artist-Photographer said:

Something in the history of Eudora also inspired the email client of the same name, cobbled together by Qualcomm Inc.

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I used Eudora. I liked it.

I hate to interrupt this fascinating discussion of the eponymous software, but on the off chance anyone is interested, here is a link to another good article on Eudora Welty's phootography.