January 9, 2009
Eudora Welty: Photographs of New York
Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Untitled photograph shot in Union Square, included in “Eudora Welty in New York: Photographs of the Early 1930s”, through February 16 at the Museum of the City of New York.
“Eudora Welty in New York” restages Welty’s 1936 solo exhibition of photographs of rural Mississippi with an addition: eleven photographs taken in Manhattan around 1935.
Read Karen Rosenberg’s New York Times review here.
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12 Responses to “Eudora Welty: Photographs of New York”
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Thanks for posting this Sheila. That Welty exhibit that came to Wichita that I posted on a while back had a few pictures she took in New York. There were far more of her Mississippi pictures in that exhibit, though, so I didn’t come away with a strong sense of how she felt about New York. So, this is nice to see.
I thought you might appreciate this, John!
That’s a really interesting photo–I’ve come back to it a couple of time.
I love Eudora Welty (mostly her words, but her photographs are mighty fine, too.)
oh look at the light ,shading, and framing. I wonder if Welty pointed her Brownie and clicked away or gave any thought to her subject
Who knows what she might have accomplished, David, if she could have kneeled before you first to receive your sage advice.
I recommend John’s Blog Meridian posts on Eudora Welty’s photographs, both “Capturing Transience” and Home by Dark: A speculative reading.
Sheila, you’re too kind. Thanks for the plug–and for remembering those posts in the first place.
David, have you heard of Garry Winogrand? He had a variety of shooting styles, but for his street material, he largely “pointed and clicked away”. On the street, on the spot, are often not the best places for “giving any thought to the subject” in street photography. Editing afterwards, is.
Daryl ;My comment was a pun. I actually knew and loved Miss Welty and hold her art in high esteem. My reference was to this new computer age where anyone can take a digital camera point ,shoot and upload.
Sorry then; I guess I didn’t make the connection between the Brownie camera (which was a thing of her time) and a digital camera of today. And the “oh look” sounded decidedly deadpan.
Very often the skill of a street photographer is the ability to apparently “click away” capturing shots randomly when that random clicking comes out of lots of practice. Shooting from the hip can be like that – a total inability to frame and yet, if you know your camera, with experience you can pretty much get what you tried for every time. I think it also comes from a confidence that often shooting digital removes or never develops – the confidence to take one shot and one only, to get up close and not use zoom, manual cameras. This isn’t me bad mouthing digital, I would never do that, it is about the shot and not the means of capture, it is perfectly possible to shoot like this with any camera.
I guess what I’m trying to say, badly, is that through practice snapping away can still be controlled to ensure there is a higher probability that you will get what you want.
Sorry, Sheila. This is a great shot and thanks for posting it and the additional information and links.