Apprenticeship

Abstract

Eudora Welty’s perspective on the variety of Mississippi life she encountered as a WPA publicity agent was intimate and sympathetic. It is unusual for a writer to leave a visual record of such a formative period, but she has done so with the hundreds of photographs she took as she travelled around her state. These provide concrete, fixed evidence of her gaze as a young woman. We must of course distinguish between the medium of the photograph and that of the written word; the camera can only capture external images of the moment, while language can explore inner psychological states, complex actions and the passage of time. Nevertheless, Welty’s photographs provide a unique definition of her concerns and the frame of her vision as an observer, the vision she would develop as she taught herself the craft of fiction. A Curtain of Green and The Wide Net explore the interests expressed by the photographs, in ways possible only with the written word.