20 Things You Didn't Know About O Brother, Where Art Thou?
11. The Visuals Reference A Mississippi Literary Icon
Those sepia visuals weren't just designed to recall the generic idea of an old photograph, however. There are also some shots in the film that instead recreate some very specific actual old photos.
One of the Coens' major influences for the look and feel of Depression-era Mississippi was the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Eudora Welty who wrote extensively about life in the American South.
Welty wasn't just a writer, though, but also a talented photographer who documented the landscape of Mississippi in her pictures as well as her words. During the 1930s Welty worked as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, travelling across the state during which she took photos of the rural landscape and rural poverty.
Welty's photos, published later in her 1971 book One Time, One Place, inspired the look of O Brother, Where Art Thou? to the extent that some of the images from her photos are directly reproduced in the film.
Most obviously, one of Welty's most famous images, showing two young black boys carrying large blocks of ice tied up with string, is directly reproduced as one of the elements of Mississippi life that our three heroes pass during the montage of their travels.
