Welty and Wright and the Visual Idea of the American South

In “Welty and Wright and the Visual Idea of the American South,” W. Ralph Eubanks compares the writers’ photographic practices. Wright turned to photography twice in his writing life: in 1938, when he wrote 12 Million Black Voices, a book with photographs by Farm Security Administration documentarians, and again in 1953, when he photographed extensively on a research trip to Ghana hoping to include his images in his book Black Power. Welty photographed Black Americans in the South during the Great Depression at the same time Wright wrote the text for 12 Million Black Voices. Eubanks compares their photographic subject positions: Welty as a white woman photographing African Americans in the South; Wright as a Black American photographing the local population on what was called the Gold Coast. What is conveyed by their images? What role do they play as “forces of social change”? A comparison of their photography follows.