"If exposure is essential, still more so is the reflection."
The words are those of author Eudora Welty from her foreword to "One Time, One Place."
Consider the reflection cast by images of cotton pickers in the Dixie sunlight, or cane syrup makers seemingly unaware of a camera pointed at them; or a crowd enjoying watermelon at the fair.
How about the silhouette of a bottle-tree; the sight of two men lugging enormous blocks of ice along a country road on a hot day; or the ruins of a once-palatial home, the shadow of the photographer visible on the road?
Every image suggests the South, its history and its people; each has a profound sense of place, and each image tells a story. The photos were taken by a woman whose work as a photographer is overshadowed by her reputation as a literary icon.
In partnership with the tri-state Southern Literary Trail and funded by the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Museum of Mobile has organized the traveling exhibition "Eudora Welty: Exposures and Reflections," which highlights Welty's photographs with her own words.
The exhibit opens Sept. 2 with a reception and related activities including free access to the exhibit and the museum galleries.
When the exhibit closes, it will travel to the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy University in Montgomery, the Atlanta History Center, Carnegie Visual Arts Center in Decatur, Ala., and to the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, Miss.
This is the first traveling exhibit organized by the Museum of Mobile. Laurence says it represents "a small step, but it's such a large step for this museum to develop something that's ready to travel."
The 40 photographs, supplemented by text panels from Welty's books and short stories, were taken during and after Welty's time as a junior publicist for the Works Progress Administration.
The images are courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (www.mdah.state.ms.us) in Jackson, Miss., which houses the Eudora Welty Collection.
Forrest Galey is special projects officer for MDAH and curator of the Eudora Welty Collection, which is managed, housed and made available for research by the Archives and Records Services Division of the MDAH.
It is "the most extensive collection of Eudora Welty materials in the world and one of the most varied literary collections in the United States," Galey says.
For perhaps the first time, Welty's photographs and her writings have been paired to produce a portrait of her native South during one of the most challenging times in our nation's history. Jacob Laurence, curator of exhibitions for the Museum of Mobile, says the simplicity of the exhibit provides its power.
"It is straightforward, honest, capturing the human spirit," he says.
"In essence, as we look at these photos we begin to see the character of ourselves as a region. It transcends race, class — everybody's touched by this. Twenty-five percent of the population was out of work. The South was devastated."
Welty, like many of her fellow photographers, captured the devastation but she also conveyed the joy and indomitable spirit of the people she photographed.
Susan Perry, grants director for the Alabama Humanities Foundation in Birmingham, says Welty was "one of the century's great Southern literary voices," and while she claimed that her photography did not directly affect her writing, "narrative is present in both creative expressions."
"As a writer and a photographer, (she) gives us iconic images of the South from the creative voice and eye of a storyteller."
This exhibit represents a rare opportunity to compare Welty's photos to her prose in a dramatic presentation that is uniquely the vision of Jacob Laurence and the Museum of Mobile, says William Gantt, director of the Southern Literary Trail (www.southernliterarytrail.org).
"Welty's photographs, like her writing, underscore her compassion and her understanding of human emotion," he says. "Welty contended that she never wrote about 'real people.' She said that 'human beings are incapable of being made into characters' for the purpose of fiction.
"If Welty did not know how to write about 'real people,' a contention her readers dispute, she certainly knew how to photograph them."
Welty is "pre-eminent among Southern writers and, in particular, she is a master of the short story," Gantt says. "An exhibit of Welty's photographs at the Museum for the City of New York during her centennial year in 2009 attracted 65,000 visitors. That number alone speaks to her enduring importance and popularity among Americans of all regions."
Each of Welty's photograph tells a short story about its subject, according to Gantt.
"She referred to her photos as 'snapshots' and her short stories are essentially 'snapshots' of the South in prose," he says. "She understood the South. She knew how to depict her home region truthfully, even succinctly, as a writer and a photographer."
Gantt says visitors to the Museum of Mobile — and the exhibit's future venues — likely will take away "an unforgettable sense of place and history."
"The Museum of Mobile is giving us all an opportunity to visit the South of the Great Depression era through the photographs of a Southern artist who does not seek to chronicle sadness or despair during bad times," he says. "She connects us with the day-to-day moments and strong people who define the South."
Frances Osborn Robb is a photograph historian from Huntsville, Ala., a graduate of Birmingham-Southern College, and holds master's degrees from the University of North Carolina and Yale University. She has curated exhibitions and served as historic photographs consultant to many others.
She also lectures widely on Alabama photographic history and holds workshops on dating and identifying photographs in institutional and family collections.
At Thursday's opening reception she will discuss the first century of women photographers in Alabama — the first is documented in 1857, she says.
"The presentation traces women as they discover and use the camera," Robb says, "providing a context for Welty's images, which, as you know, are not nearly as well known as her writing. But I'll bet they are much more familiar than photographs by the women I'll be talking about."
The exhibit "tells us that talent doesn't have to be (compartmentalized)," she says, "and that an individual can successfully explore more than one medium of expression. It also tells us that combinations of talents can make a unified whole. Eudora is a writer, but to do her writing, she had to be an observer."
What Welty observed sometimes made its way into a story or a photograph, according to Robb. "What she observed and photographed or wrote about, was true to her own personality and experience. Together it makes a unified whole."
Eudora Welty is one of the most famous and revered names in Southern literature, and one of the most significant women authors of her era, Robb says.
"The exhibition takes a giant step in familiarizing people with her photography, which is less well known. The charm of this exhibition is that it makes it easy for museum-goers to appreciate her from two directions — the writing and the photography — not just one."
Welty's writing has been studied endlessly and two distinctive characteristics inform both her writing and her photography, according to Robb: a profound sense of place and a love of storytelling.
"In addition, Eudora grew up in an age when the nation was becoming more visually oriented," she says. "Her visual skills are expressed in her writing as well as her photography. The camera is her means of capturing an individual or a scene, of documenting her experience.
"At the same time, one of her photographs can be self-sufficient or it can become the basis for a story."
Robb says she hopes that museum visitors leave the building with the notion "that photography and writing can go hand in hand."
"I also hope that they would want to read more of her work and take a look at more of her photographs," she says. "And I would be thrilled if some museum-goers want to pick up their cameras and photograph their own individual world, or write a story that comes out of their own experience."
EUDORA WELTY
WHAT: "Eudora Welty: Exposures and Reflections"
WHEN: Sept. 2-Oct. 31; the exhibit will travel to four venues in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi
WHERE: Museum of Mobile, 111 S. Royal St., downtown Mobile
RECEPTION: Teacher preview 4-7 p.m. Sept 2; general public preview 5-9 p.m.; presentation by Alabama Rhodes Scholar Frances Robb at 6 p.m.; Camera South meeting 7-8 p.m., open to the public. Free viewing of the exhibit and all permanent galleries of the museum.
CURATOR: Jacob Laurence
MUSEUM HOURS: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 1-5 p.m. Sunday
ADMISSION: $5 adults, $4 seniors, $3 students; free to ages 5 and younger (total family rate not to exceed $20); $1 off for active-duty military with I.D. Group discounts available. Admission free the first Sunday of each month.
INFO: 251-208-7569 or www.museumofmobile.com
NOTE: The exhibit showcases 40 photographs taken by author Eudora Welty in the 1930s during and after her time as a junior publicist for the Works Progress Administration. The photos, along with text panels and excerpts from Welty's novels and short stories, create a record of the Great Depression South by a native of the region. The exhibit was developed in partnership with the Southern Literary Trail and funded by Alabama Humanities Foundation, and is the first traveling exhibit designed by the Museum of Mobile.