Oscar-winner Autumn Dural Arkapaw’s visual inspiration for the film Sinners is in the ICP Library. On March 1, 2026, Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
In an interview on The Big Picture podcast, she said she was inspired by Eudora Welty’s work. Welty was a short-story writer, novelist, and photographer whose book Photographs—which can be found ...
The narrative of Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s historic Oscar win and her creative process offers a compelling case study in how art across mediums and eras can inform contemporary storytelling. At its strongest, this account highlights the power of archival photography to bridge historical contexts with modern cinematic expression, demonstrating how Welty’s Depression-era images—rooted in raw human experience—could resonate in a 21st-century film. The emphasis on "real people in real spaces" as a gui...