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Scholars Present “Reading the Welty Photographs” Three Welty scholars presented “Reading the Welty Photographs” on February 24 at Millsaps. The Southern Studies Lecture explored several distinct perspectives of Eudora Welty’s photographs, which were primarily taken during the 1930s. Welty once said that her quest in photography, as in fiction, was “not to point the finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.” The Millsaps lecture dealt with the fulfillment of that quest. Suzanne Marrs, Professor of English, discussed Welty’s career as a photographer, her informal training, and her choice of cameras and subjects. In 1985-1986, Marrs served as Welty Scholar for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. In 1998, she received a Pho enix Award for distinguished scholarship from the Eudora Welty Society. Marrs is the author of The Welty Collection, and has published numerous articles on Welty. Patti Carr Black, retired Director of the State Historical Museum, gave a presentation on the decisions involved when she and the staff of the museum mounted two major shows of Welty photo- graphs and prepared catalogues for them. Black led the museum from 1976 to 1992, introducing compelling artists such as Walter Anderson, Ethel Wright Mohamed, and George Ohr to the public. Since her retirement, she has continued to be an active free-lance curator and writer. In 1998, she published Art in Mississippi, 1720-1980. Harriet Pollack, Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, considered Welty’s photographs in relation to her fiction. Pollack is the editor of Having Our Way: Women Rewriting Tradition in Twentieth-Century America. She has published widely on Welty, and her essay on the relationship between photographic convention and Welty’s story composition won the 1998 Kirby Prize from the South Central Modern Language Association. “These photographs tell us much about our state, about ourselves, and about the incisive and inclusive vision that has made Eudora Welty one of this nation’s great writers.” Slides of selected Welty photographs were shown throughout the presentations. PREVIOUS PAGE | PAGE 1 OF 1 | NEXT PAGE |
