magazinelogo

Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Online: 2576-0548 Downloads: 605142 Total View: 4376020
Frequency: monthly ISSN Print: 2576-0556 CODEN: JHASAY
Email: jhass@hillpublisher.com
Article Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2025.02.022

Remapping the Geography of Race: The Politics of Space in Eudora Welty’s Photography

Zhihuan Liu

FAFU-DAL Joint College, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, Fujian, China.

*Corresponding author: Zhihuan Liu

Published: March 18,2025

Abstract

Before embarking on her lifelong career as a writer, Eudora Welty (1909-2001) used a camera to record Southern life in the Great Depression era. It’s worth noting that a majority of her photographic works focus on African American experience. While the Farm Security Administration documentary photography tends to reduce the black people into denigrating stereotypes, Welty’s snapshots, as she calls them, highlight their geographical movement and social ascendency. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of social space, this paper examines Eudora Welty’s photographic representations of Black mobility in the Jim Crow South. By focusing on scenes of everyday movement, from well-dressed professionals stepping through city streets to families traveling in wagons and cars, Welty’s work resists dominant narratives of Black immobility and marginalization. Moreover, her documentation of Black parades and public performances highlights collective expressions of progress and community strength. Through a nuanced reading of these images, this paper argues that Welty’s visual record of Black mobility not only critiques the racialized geography of the South but also offers a counter-narrative of social change, imagining a more inclusive and dynamic public space.

References

Atkins-Sayre, W. (2012). Snapshots of the South: Eudora Welty’s Photography and Contested Images of Race. Southern Communication Journal, 77, 77-93.

Brown, R. L. (1997). Ghosts Dancing on the Cracker Circuit: The Culture of Festivals in the American South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Cresswell, T. (2006). On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. New York: Routledge.

Donaldson, S. V. (2024). Witnessing Jim Crow: Three Mississippi Writers and the Politics of Critical Race Theory. In A. Trefzer, J. Watson, and J. G. Thomas (Eds.), Faulkner, Welty, Wright: A Mississippi Confluence (pp. 63-85). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Ellenberg, G. B. (2007). Mule South to Tractor South: Mules, Machines, and the Transformation of the Cotton South. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.

Farley, R. (1968). The Urbanization of Negroes in the United States. Journal of Social History, 1, 241-258.

Gatewood, W. B. (2000). Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.

Gilroy, P. (2001). Driving While Black. In D. Miller (Ed.), Car Cultures (pp. 81-104). New York: Berg.

Giucci, G. (2012). The Cultural Life of the Automobile: Roads to Modernity. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Hale, G. E. (1998). Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940. New York: Vintage Books.

Henninger, K. (2007). Ordering the Façade: Photography and Contemporary Southern Women’s Writing. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Ladd, B. (2001). “Writing against Death”: Totalitarianism and the Nonfiction of Eudora Welty at Midcentury. In H. Pollack and S. Marrs (Eds.), Eudora Welty and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade? (pp. 155-178). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lesseig, C. T. (2001). Automobility: Social Changes in the American South, 1909-1939. New York: Routledge.

McMillen, N. R. (1990). Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Natanson, N. (1992). The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA Photography. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Pollack, H. (2016). Eudora Welty’s Fiction and Photography: The Body of the Other Woman. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography. New York: Picador.

Spear, A. H. (1967). Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto: 1890-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Trefzer, A. (2020). Transformative Performances: Eudora Welty’s “Negro State Fair Parade” Photographs. In H. Pollack (Ed.), New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race (pp. 10-34). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Trefzer, A. (2022). Exposing Mississippi: Eudora Welty’s Photographic Reflections. Jackson: University Press of Missis-sippi.

Trethewey, N. (1989). That’s Just the Way It was. In Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty: Photographs. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Wegner, P. (2002). Spatial Criticism. In J. Wolfreys (Ed.), Introducing Criticism at the 21st Century (pp. 179-201). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Welty, E. (1971). One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression: A Snapshot Album. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Welty, E. (1985). In Black and White: Photographs of the 30’s and 40’s. Northridge: Lord John Press.

Welty, E. (1989). Eudora Welty: Photographs. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Welty, E. (1990). The Eye of the Story. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Westling, L. (1987). The Loving Observer of One Time, One Place. In A. J. Devlin (Ed.), Welty: A Life in Literature (pp. 168-187). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Wright, G. (2014). The New Deal and the Modernization of the South. Federal History, 1, 1-17.

How to cite this paper

Remapping the Geography of Race: The Politics of Space in Eudora Welty's Photography

How to cite this paper: Zhihuan Liu. (2025) Remapping the Geography of Race: The Politics of Space in Eudora Welty's Photography. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science9(2), 350-356.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2025.02.022