Eudora Welty "The Little Store"

Seeing 2.

I like the fact that Eudore Welty using the photography and writing together, but at the same time, I feel that each of these elements reveal the unspoken truth about one another that each and every of us should discover themselves. It sort of breaks our imagination and let us face the reality without going on the journey of discovery.

Well in the image we could see the old man. As we suggest from the name of the photograph he is a storekeeper. The photo is black and white relating to the time it was taken in 1935. We can not really see the face of the man as one side of it is in the shadow and the other is stroked with the bright light. He is wearing dressy pants with suspenders and a shirt with a tie and a clipper (not sure of the right name of it) on it. It is interesting, but in 1930ies man were already switching to belts to hold their pants, while this man in the picture dated 1935 still wore the suspenders. One of his arm is on the vegetable and we might suggest that it is a sign of ownership over the store. Above the vegetables we could see bananas. Do bananas really grow in Jackson, Mississippi?! :-) In the background we could notice the phone machine (sign of connection to the outside world and other humans) and a poster of "Wright and Ferguson". It appeared to be a name of the funeral home in Jackson, MS, where the author grew up. It is interesting what kind of connections it might have as Eudora Welty mentioned that the family of the storekeeper as him himself "were the only people ever known to me who simply vanished." The store is made up of wood as we might suggest by the wood walls. 

Coming back to the man himself, besides the things that I notice about him, I could add that he sits leg over leg, one arm of the vegetable while other between his legs (it might be a sign of hiding something). He seems to look in the camera, but because if lightning we can not know this for sure. It is almost like he is looking through you in the middle of nowhere, in the emptiness. 

It might be that the image in the background and an old storekeeper reveal to us that one day everything comes to an end. Sooner or later the death will knock on your door, but the birds of life like in the background photograph will sing the song of life and prosperity by the lips of the younger generations. Who knows?