photo stories - places as storytelling heavyweights

The sense of place is as essential to good and honest writing as a logical mind;
surely they are somewhere related.  It is by knowing where you stand that you
grow able to judge where you are.  Place absorbs our earliest notice and
attention, it bestows on us our original awareness; and our critical powers
spring up from the study of it and the growth of experience inside it.  It
perseveres in bringing us back to earth when we fly too high. It never really
stops informing us, for it is forever astir, alive, changing, reflecting, like the
mind of man itself.  One place comprehended can make us understand other 
places better.  Sense of place gives equilibrium; extended, it is sense of direction
too.  Carried off we might be in spirit, and should be, when we are reading or
writing something good.

- Eudora Welty

I like this idea that a full comprehension of one place - say, the place in which we
grew up - can help us to understand other places better.  If a writer has let one
place into herself, future places - real or imagined - states, towns, buildings, even
fascinating rooms - might better get in too.  All the better for conveying these
places to others.

By Vanessa Morrow

By Jake Messenger

By Rachel Chew

By Emily Hunt

By Ines A.

By Helene Ryden

By David Vilmundarson

By Kevin Morris