When he began his research for Looking for the Light (297 pages. Knopf. $35), Washington Post reporter Paul Hendrickson bought the conventional wisdom about Wolcott: that in 1941 she married a strongwilled, egocentric man who forced her to abandon photography in favor of motherhood and homemaking. As Hendrickson pursued his investigation, however, he changed his mind. Yes, this was still the story of an artist " who let go of that gifted, magical thing inside her until it was too late and the gift was lost." But, while Wolcott did fear that pursuing photography might imperil her marriage, it was not that simple. “The letting go was due to many things, not the least of which was the burden of being human, of being fearful.”
One of her greatest fears was that she might not measure up any longer, and the longer she put off resuming her photography, the more fearful she became that her knack was gone. In a 1965 interview, she said, “Now when I see these ads for photo competitions and it always says, ‘Only amateurs can participate,’ I wonder if I couldn’t be an amateur and maybe win a prize, and I don’t know what my status is.”
Hendrickson uses every technique he can think of to decipher Wolcott’s life. He recounts the facts, then speculates, meditates, turns them inside out. He interviews her and her husband repeatedly, as well as her children and her friends, then weaves their words into a Rashomon-like tapestry of testimony. Borrowing a by-now familiar technique, he visits landscapes where she did her shooting, looking up survivors, walking the acreage. He makes us see what it must have felt like for a young woman in the ’30s, alone and unsure of herself, to intrude on the lives of countless strangers, to sleep in a hundred sorry hotels, to struggle with unruly weather and cumbersome equipment, and for what? A measly pay-check and the dubious benefit of her own company and no other for months on end. Staring at the dozens of Wolcott photographs that accompany the text, one marvels at the relaxed, easy grace that characterizes her work. (It is a shame the reproductions are not better.)
By the time he’s done, Hendrickson has given us an astonishingly good idea of how uncertain life looked from inside the mind of Marion Wolcott. As for her decision to abandon her art, “it’s a complex story in which blame, if blame is the word, is on every side,” Hendrickson writes. Before her death in 1990, Wolcott had seen her work rediscovered and her reputation as one of the century’s best photographers secured. But the life remained in shadow. Now, in a biography as unorthodox and strangely shaped as the life it describes, Hendrickson has brought this fascinating woman to life in a portrait as vivid as one of her own photographs. Beyond that it is one of the most lucid and humane books ever written about the artistic sensibility and the cost of the art to the artist.
