Lot 350
Eudora Welty (American/Mississippi, 1909-2001), "The Eudora Welty Portfolio: Mississippi Department of Archives and History and Diogenes Editions", 1992, 18 toned prints on silver paper, each pencil-signed lower right, numbered "12/60" lower left and "Diogenes Edition, Jackson, Mississippi" embossed seal lower left, 20 in. x 16 in. or 16 in. x 20 in., framed alike, (18 pcs.) Provenance: Collection of a Jackson, MS Lady, Note: Before publishing her first story, Eudora Welty was an accomplished photographer. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, Welty gathered a body of work remarkable for her choice of subjects and ability to put them at ease. The images depict the everyday lives of Mississippians at the height of the Depression. In early 1936, Welty was featured in a one-woman show of forty-five photographs at Lugene Opticians in New York. That same summer, Welty published her first short story, Death of a Traveling Salesman, and became a publicity agent, junior grade, for the WPA in Mississippi. Welty traveled throughout the states backroads, small towns, and rural areas to write articles about WPA projects for community weeklies, snapping pictures along the way. Although taking pictures was not part of her official WPA tasks, the experience helped chart Weltys literary life. She is quoted in 1989: In snapping these pictures I was acting completely on my own, though Im afraid it was on their time; they have nothing to do with the WPA. But the WPA gave me the chance to travel, to see widely and at close hand and really for the first time the nature of the place Id been born into. And it gave me the blessing of showing me the real State of Mississippi, not the abstract state of the Depression. The rare complete portfolio offered here was conceived as a means of exhibiting the range and diversity of Weltys work, but more than that it displays the photographer's wide-ranging curiosity and unstinting empathy, which would mark her work as a writer. The images were chosen from the over 1000 negatives in the the Eudora Welty Collection of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Around seventy-five images were presented to Welty, who selected the final eighteen, was closely involved in the printing process and had final approval for the prints. Ref.: Frail, T.A. Eudora Welty as Photographer. Smithsonian Magazine. Apr. 2009. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/womens-history/eudora-welty-as-photographer-117044298/?no-ist. Accessed June 9, 2016. Scanlan, Laura Wolff. Southern Exposure. Humanities. Jan./Feb. 2011. http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/statement/southern-exposure. Access June 9, 2016.
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