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Country Churchyards
For many years Eudora Welty wished to produce a book about country churchyards. Published at long last in her ninety-first year, this book includes ninety of her photographs along with a conversation in which Welty shares her impressions and her memories of the 1930s and 1940s when she rambled through Mississippi cemeteries taking pictures. She recalls poignant and sometimes chilling experiences that occurred.
“I took a lot of cemetery pictures in my life,” she said. “For me cemeteries had a sinister appeal somehow.” Her camera eye focused on distinctive funerary emblems, statuary, storied urns, and appealing folklife qualities expressed in the gravestones. Just as many pieces of Welty's fiction feature lyrical descriptions of cemeteries and graves in a way that is expressly Weltian, so too do these photographs taken in the cool, sequestered churchyards and graveyards of Jackson, Port Gibson, Churchill, Rodney, Utica, Crystal Springs, Vicksburg, Rocky Springs, and sites near the old Natchez Trace.
They not only document her rambles but also accent the images of regional cemeteries that appear in her stories and novels. This is her unique view of the southern graveyard and of its unusual artworks that arrested her attention―chains, willows, baskets, angels, lambs, pointing hands, doves, and wreaths. “I like the tombstones showing children asleep in seashells,” she says. For her, an absorbed observer, there is charm in the stone motifs and in the sentimental modes of commemorating the dead.
As a contemplative loner she called no attention to herself as she wandered quietly through small-town cemeteries with her camera. Both the country settings and the heartfelt inscriptions on decaying marble heightened her imagination and triggered her creative impulses.
Accompanying the photographs are selected passages about graveyards and funerals from her fiction― Losing Battles , The Golden Apples and Other Stories , A Curtain of Green and Other Stories , and T he Optimist's Daughter― and from her essay “Some Notes on River Country.”
In the introduction Elizabeth Spencer, a Mississippi writer who has been a lifelong friend of Welty's, explores the photographic images for the meanings they yield, for the light they throw onto Welty's fiction, and for her own memories of their home state's evocative graveyards and burial customs.
“I took a lot of cemetery pictures in my life,” she said. “For me cemeteries had a sinister appeal somehow.” Her camera eye focused on distinctive funerary emblems, statuary, storied urns, and appealing folklife qualities expressed in the gravestones. Just as many pieces of Welty's fiction feature lyrical descriptions of cemeteries and graves in a way that is expressly Weltian, so too do these photographs taken in the cool, sequestered churchyards and graveyards of Jackson, Port Gibson, Churchill, Rodney, Utica, Crystal Springs, Vicksburg, Rocky Springs, and sites near the old Natchez Trace.
They not only document her rambles but also accent the images of regional cemeteries that appear in her stories and novels. This is her unique view of the southern graveyard and of its unusual artworks that arrested her attention―chains, willows, baskets, angels, lambs, pointing hands, doves, and wreaths. “I like the tombstones showing children asleep in seashells,” she says. For her, an absorbed observer, there is charm in the stone motifs and in the sentimental modes of commemorating the dead.
As a contemplative loner she called no attention to herself as she wandered quietly through small-town cemeteries with her camera. Both the country settings and the heartfelt inscriptions on decaying marble heightened her imagination and triggered her creative impulses.
Accompanying the photographs are selected passages about graveyards and funerals from her fiction― Losing Battles , The Golden Apples and Other Stories , A Curtain of Green and Other Stories , and T he Optimist's Daughter― and from her essay “Some Notes on River Country.”
In the introduction Elizabeth Spencer, a Mississippi writer who has been a lifelong friend of Welty's, explores the photographic images for the meanings they yield, for the light they throw onto Welty's fiction, and for her own memories of their home state's evocative graveyards and burial customs.
111 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2000
About the author
Eudora Welty
230 books1,078 followersEudora Alice Welty was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.
Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.
Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.
During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.
Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 16, 2015
When I put in a library request for One Writer's Beginnings, I happened upon this book too and put in a second request at the same time. I've wanted to have a look at Welty's photos and thoughts at some point and it was definitely a good experience.
This book was a labor of love, created near the end of Welty's life from photographs she took during the 1930s and 40s in Mississippi churchyards. She very obviously was captured by the various gravestone motifs, many reflecting 19th century values and beliefs. All photos are in black and white. Some are almost portraits of folk art and brought a smile to my face and now again from memory.
This book combined several of my strong interests: photography, old cemeteries, old buildings, the American South, and Eudora Welty. As Welty said in the introduction, Mississippi had no art except in cemeteries. As someone who has seen parts of glorious cemeteries near Boston, I think I understand her feeling. The art in old cemeteries is person and also more.
And Elizabeth Spencer, in her introduction states:
[Welty] is not, as she has told us in One Writer's
Beginnings, a "believer" in the traditional sense of
the word. What comes through to us here and in her
fiction is her sense of reverence for life's mysteries,
death being one of those. But sometimes, even in the
grim face of it, we can't help but laugh. How not to
when we see the little winged children racing about
with wreaths on a matched pair of Jackson tombs, or
a whole sheep, lying atop another, looking wildly
astonished to be there? (p 20)
The photographs are accompanied by selections from Welty's writings. I do recommend this if it seems to meet any of your interest areas.
This book was a labor of love, created near the end of Welty's life from photographs she took during the 1930s and 40s in Mississippi churchyards. She very obviously was captured by the various gravestone motifs, many reflecting 19th century values and beliefs. All photos are in black and white. Some are almost portraits of folk art and brought a smile to my face and now again from memory.
This book combined several of my strong interests: photography, old cemeteries, old buildings, the American South, and Eudora Welty. As Welty said in the introduction, Mississippi had no art except in cemeteries. As someone who has seen parts of glorious cemeteries near Boston, I think I understand her feeling. The art in old cemeteries is person and also more.
And Elizabeth Spencer, in her introduction states:
[Welty] is not, as she has told us in One Writer's
Beginnings, a "believer" in the traditional sense of
the word. What comes through to us here and in her
fiction is her sense of reverence for life's mysteries,
death being one of those. But sometimes, even in the
grim face of it, we can't help but laugh. How not to
when we see the little winged children racing about
with wreaths on a matched pair of Jackson tombs, or
a whole sheep, lying atop another, looking wildly
astonished to be there? (p 20)
The photographs are accompanied by selections from Welty's writings. I do recommend this if it seems to meet any of your interest areas.
March 22, 2017
I have enjoyed visiting old cemeteries and recording old grave markers with my camera, so I really enjoyed this compilation of photographs that Welty took in the thirties and forties. The book begins with a some of the author's thoughts during her ninetieth year, and the photographs are often accompanied with a passage from her writing.
April 14, 2011
What a charming little book this is! It contains 90 black-and-white photographs, snapped by the grand dame of Southern literature in Mississippi churchyards during in the 1930s and 40s. “Mississippi,” she said, “had no art except cemeteries.”
Miss Welty merely trained her lens on whatever interested her. Angels appear more often than any other figure. One unusual stone that I particularly like is coffin-shaped, sheltering a moon-faced girl with staring eyes. She bears the outline of her life written on a tablet on her chest. I’ve never seen anything else like it. There’s a life-sized rendition of the Old Rugged Cross, complete with clinging virgin. Several stone dogs guard their masters’ graves. A whole flock of lambs sleep atop children’s graves, including a startled sheep whose eyes bug out at the camera.
Amongst the photographs, excerpts from Welty’s fiction and essays appear, along with her reminiscences of the photographing trips which were recorded in her 90th year.
As Welty’s friend Elizabeth Spencer notes in her introduction, all of Welty’s art -- whether photography, fiction, or essays -- “is an effort to rescue life from oblivion.” These lovely photos definitely serve that function. It’s noted at one point that these memorials have suffered decades of winter and abuse since Welty snapped her photos. It’s likely that if any of these sculptures still survive, they are worse for wear. Welty preserved them. This book, like a time machine, brings them into the present.
This review came from Morbid Curiosity #6.
Miss Welty merely trained her lens on whatever interested her. Angels appear more often than any other figure. One unusual stone that I particularly like is coffin-shaped, sheltering a moon-faced girl with staring eyes. She bears the outline of her life written on a tablet on her chest. I’ve never seen anything else like it. There’s a life-sized rendition of the Old Rugged Cross, complete with clinging virgin. Several stone dogs guard their masters’ graves. A whole flock of lambs sleep atop children’s graves, including a startled sheep whose eyes bug out at the camera.
Amongst the photographs, excerpts from Welty’s fiction and essays appear, along with her reminiscences of the photographing trips which were recorded in her 90th year.
As Welty’s friend Elizabeth Spencer notes in her introduction, all of Welty’s art -- whether photography, fiction, or essays -- “is an effort to rescue life from oblivion.” These lovely photos definitely serve that function. It’s noted at one point that these memorials have suffered decades of winter and abuse since Welty snapped her photos. It’s likely that if any of these sculptures still survive, they are worse for wear. Welty preserved them. This book, like a time machine, brings them into the present.
This review came from Morbid Curiosity #6.
February 8, 2025
Simple book; lovely photos
December 12, 2012
This book, like Miss Welty's short stories, can be perused over and over again, and something new will appear to the observer every time. The pictures demand to be studied in order to fully appreciate them. Thought provoking, somewhat nostalgic, often humorous, quite interesting how people remember and memorialize the dead.
June 21, 2016
Touching photographs taken in graveyards. Many, especially those of infants, bring forth feelings of sadness and grief. It is amazing how the photographer was able to take these stationary images, which are all so touching and heartfelt.
March 1, 2010
I love Eudora Welty. Well, at least her photography. I'll get around to reading more of her books soon. This is quite a fascinating body of work considering how cliche cemetery photography can be.
June 11, 2010
I'm a sucker for old churches, graveyards, and black and white photography, so I loved this book!
September 17, 2016
Awesome photos! my only complaint would be I wish she would've labeled the name of each cemetery underneath the photo, or organized them by cemetery. makes me want to road trip to Mississippi now!
April 26, 2014
Such beautiful and heartfelt photographs
May 7, 2019
I don't think I've read any of Eudora Welty's work, so even having read the preface, I don't think I fully understand the correlation between her work and gravestone photograph - but it would seem that there are her writing has heavy themes of graves and graveyards.
While I'm not terribly familiar with her, I do appreciate cemeteries and the artistry within them, and this book is full of (black and white) photographs of ornate marble and some iron work. And I have to say, the bug-eyed marble sheep on page 73 made me smile.
While I'm not terribly familiar with her, I do appreciate cemeteries and the artistry within them, and this book is full of (black and white) photographs of ornate marble and some iron work. And I have to say, the bug-eyed marble sheep on page 73 made me smile.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews