A Woman of the Thirties (Jackson)

Artist Eudora Welty American, 1909–2001

DatePrinted 1992 from 1930s or early 1940s negative

MediumToned gelatin-silver print

Dimensionsimage: 17 1/4 × 12 1/2 in. (43.8 × 31.8 cm)
paper: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
frame: 24 7/8 × 20 7/8 × 1 7/8 in. (63.2 × 53 × 4.8 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LineGift of Robert P. Venuti in honor of Lawrence J. Wheeler

Object number2016.4.1

On View

On view

Label TextThis photograph is 1 of 18 photographs in a portfolio by the acclaimed American novelist and short story writer Eudora Welty (1909–2001), produced by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1992 (with Welty selecting the images and printing techniques) to represent the range of her photographs of the 1930s and early 1940s.
Welty’s iconic images of the South during this time bring to mind the photographs of Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans, among others. In comparing Welty’s work to Levitt’s photographs of New York, critic John Szarkowski wrote, “Like those of Levitt, Welty’s photographs do not show us the only truths of her subjects’ lives; perhaps they show us only the rarest and most evanescent truths, in which case we are the more grateful for these proofs of their existence.”
Born in Jackson, Mississippi, Welty attended Mississippi State College and the University of Wisconsin and went on to study advertising at Columbia University in New York. She returned to Jackson and, in 1935, began working for the Works Progress Administration, taking photographs of daily life in Mississippi. In 1936 she published her first short story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” and eventually left the WPA to become a full-time writer, publishing over forty short stories and five novels.
[L. Dougherty, 2016]ProvenanceCreated 1930s or early 1940s, Jackson, MS; collection of the artist; published by Diogenes Editions with Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS, May 15, 1992; acquired by Robert Venuti, Chapel Hill, NC, 1993; given to NCMA, 2015.Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Looking South: Photographs by Eudora Welty,” April 8–September 3, 2017.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Reflections on Light: Works from the NCMA Collection,” [Part 2] April 7, 2021–August 15, 2021.

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