Accompanying the stories in Digital Yoknapatawpha is a repository of historical photographs.
These are available under the visualizations tab.
Totaling 225 photographs, the archive provides a glimpse of what
life looked like in northern Mississippi between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.
The photographs are drawn from several different collections.
Clicking on the collection link opens up an historical note,
and a gallery view of the photographs.
The introduction contextualizes the photographs,
and explains how these photographers,
just like writers, were trying to capture a particular perspective.
Clicking on the individual photographs brings up the full-size image along with information about its provenance.
Many of the photographs are not just valuable as archival material,
but are beautiful in-and-of themselves.
For example, this picture of “cotton hoers” in Clarksdale, Mississippi
by famous Depression-era photographer, Dorothea Lange,
stands out for the way she has captured the hard, long days of the farm workers depicted.
Or, this poignant image by noted photographer Marion Post Wolcott that shows
the stark reality of racial segregation in the Jim Crow South.
When looking through this wealth of material and considering how it sheds light on “A Rose for Emily,”
it is interesting to observe some of the pictures that were taken of people in and around town.
One thing that is noticeable is the number of men public space.
They play dominoes on the sidewalk,
hang out on the town square,
and linger in front of stores.
Women are less visible.
We may ask ourselves why this is.
Is this just a happenstance result of the collection?
Did women not want to be photographed?
Did women not hang out in groups in public?
Thinking of “A Rose for Emily,” what must it have been like for Emily, an upper-class woman,
to go around town on Sundays in her buggy with Homer Barron, a day laborer?
What would it have been like for any woman in a small town to try to have a public relationship with a partner of her choosing?
Of course, one should not draw conclusions from only a few photographs, and it is worth studying all of them.
They are a powerful reminder of the ways in which Faulkner’s time was different than ours.