Marion Post Wolcott and the FSA Photographers

Looking For The Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott
by Paul Hendrickson, Marion Post Wolcott


Hardcover, 297 pages
Published April 21st 1992 by Knopf (first published 1992)
ISBN: 0394577299 (ISBN13: 9780394577296)
original title: Looking For The Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott

literary awards: National Book Critics' Circle Award (1992)


I have said this before but holy cow, Paul Hendrickson is quite a talented writer. Glad he did not (as he did consider it) kill himself over his deep and frustrating depression before he discovered the photographs and life of Marion Post Wolcott. Glad her life seemed important enough to save his own. Paul Hendrickson, in my opinion, is the very best biographer working today. He does not leave a rock unturned or many trails untraveled in his quest to find the truth or better story behind his subject.

Hendrickson writes how he became a part of this book while researching it, how he realized that he had to be in it, a part of it, contrary to the norm in the customary reporting of a life. I liken his craft of writing to what is called creative non-fiction. Of course, those who know and operate under that banner might disagree with me, but I am speaking from a stance of how I feel about the words "creative non-fiction". There are stories to tell and many ways to tell them. Rather than a chronological, linear straight reporting or storytelling, Hendrickson veers off the roads, many of them, to give us a clearer understanding of how layered and dirty a life can be. Anyone who has traveled without the use of luxuries can better understand what I am talking about when I speak of the grime and stink associated with the open road. When you get the bigger picture the beauty is even more astounding.

The life of Marion Post Wolcott was beautiful and worthy of this book written about her. She was an amazing talent who was all too human and suffered the pitfalls we all experience as we stumble through life. Hendrickson worked hard at discovering why a woman with so much talent, and what the future might selfishly hold for her, seemed to suddenly quit her craft in order to raise a family and build a life bigger than her own. And it is exactly that, the previous statement that Hendrickson found so convincing. In her later years, in a loving letter to her from a grandchild, Marion showed why art, and our ideas of what art is, are sometimes overshadowed and engulfed by the love in serving others and being close in times of need. Of course, there are many other facets that went into Marion Post Wolcott's decision to quit her art, and nobody but Hendrickson could have presented it better.

I have seen criticism of this book that Hendrickson was being too self-indulgent, that the book was too focused on his own feelings about Marion, his fascination with her, even his admitted fantasy with the attractive woman of the past. In another sentence by the same critic you will also read how the long book makes you actually look at yourself, much the same as what happened to Hendrickson. Hard to have it both ways in my book. But no matter what the critics say, facts are: Looking For The Light is another tantalizing read written by Paul Hendrickson. It is at once erotic and sensual, dark and disarming, feminine and masculine in all its projections whether from the voice and images of the past or the still-living who remember her most for what she was in all her beauty, a mother of long accomplishment and good wife.