Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott

The best of Marion Post Wolcott's (1910-1990) photographs of the Deep South during the Depression rank with those of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, her colleagues in the Farm Security Administration. Unlike them, Wolcott (who also ventured to Montana and Vermont) is scarcely remembered today, partly because she dropped out of the FSA in 1942 after three years on the road, renouncing her art for the sake of marriage and children. Illustrated with 92 photographs, this affectionate biographical-critical portrait by Washington Post staff writer Hendrickson recreates Wolcott's brave solo travels, from shantytowns and speakeasies to plantations, coal miners' homes, strikes and swank beach clubs. Her cogent documentary pictures celebrate ordinary, enduring Americans and fathom the hidden costs of racial bigotry, cowboy dreams and our tendency to make the dispossessed invisible. (May)