Marwencol

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MARK HOGANCAMP died 11 years ago tomorrow, when five men kicked his head in outside a Kingston, N.Y., bar in the early morning hours. He was reborn months later, after he awoke from a nine-day coma, his memory wiped nearly clean of the details of his life — his early marriage, girlfriends, family, Navy service, thundering alcoholism, homelessness, jail time — and he had to relearn how to eat, walk and think at age 38. Feeling shunned by the outside world, he created his own world, a tiny society called Marwencol.

Made from scraps of plywood and peopled with a tribe of Barbies and World War II action figures, Marwencol grew along the side of his trailer home near Kingston. (Mr. Hogancamp named his new world after himself and Wendy and Colleen, two women he had crushes on.) Narratives surrounding a downed American fighter pilot rescued by Marwencol’s all-female population began unfurling against a backdrop that was nominally a World War II setting, in Belgium. The themes, however, were Mr. Hogancamp’s own: the brutality of men, the safe haven of a town of women, the twin demons of rage and fear. Mr. Hogancamp captured his stories with thousands of photographs, shooting on an old Pentax with a broken light meter. The noirish images, complete with blood flecks in the snow, are riveting and emotional.

How these photographs made their way into an art magazine, and then a Manhattan gallery show — “Mr. Hogancamp has an uncanny feel for body language, psychology and stage direction,” Jerry Saltz wrote in 2006 in The Village Voice — and how Mr. Hogancamp negotiated the blessings and pitfalls of what he calls his second life, was the subject of “Marwencol,” a documentary that made its debut at the South by Southwest film festival last spring and roared through the festival circuit in the fall, accruing an armful of awards. (The film is being released on DVD and Blu-ray next week and will be shown on the PBS series “Independent Lens” on April 26.)

There were accolades for the filmmaker, Jeff Malmberg, who captured his subject with generosity and warmth, and for Mr. Hogancamp, who was embraced for his artwork, his openhearted world view and his stunning collection of women’s footwear. (When Mr. Hogancamp returned home after the beating, he discovered a closet full of women’s pumps and boots. “Do I have a girlfriend?” he asked a friend. “They’re yours,” the friend replied. “You collect them and you wear them.” Mr. Hogancamp then learned that the men who beat him did so after he told them he was a cross-dresser.)

For this reclusive man, still tender from post-traumatic stress disorder and brain damage (and also, he imagines, years of hard drinking, though he can’t remember the craving for alcohol), the last year has been painful in all sorts of new ways, as he has shared Marwencol, and himself, with an ever-widening sphere of people. He now has an unlisted phone number. He gets frustrated when he has to take time away from building sets and shooting scenes at Marwencol, which he works on every day, dropping into the action with intense focus and losing himself for hours. And there have been the gut-roiling challenges of attending movie screenings, digging deep for the courage not only to leave his home but also to face a crowd, figuring out what to wear. A skirt and heels are calming, he said, “but that’s what got me beaten to death.”

It was the left side of his brain that was damaged by the battering, “the decision-making part, the linear stuff,” he said. “I have a very difficult time making a decision. I have to mull it over for a few days, think it over from front to back. People think I’m all brainy, but it’s just that I’m alone and I have so much time to think. They don’t see me when I wobble.” All five of his attackers were convicted of their crime; only three served jail time.

On a rare warm March afternoon, a few days before his 49th birthday, Mr. Hogancamp had flung open the windows of his trailer so that a reporter could breathe while he smoked. With his thick, wavy hair and a Pall Mall 100 clamped tight in an impish smile, Mr. Hogancamp resembled a character out of “The Great Escape,” full of can-do spirit.

The place looked magical: Fighter planes hung from the ceiling; doll parts and tiny accessories — wire-rim glasses the size of a wedding ring — were jumbled on counters and tables. If each home is a refuge, this one is as fortified as a medieval castle. Tucked into every corner were women — dolls one-sixth the size of real women, that is. Some were Barbies, like Deja, the Witch of Marwencol, who wears her metallic green hair in a Louise Brooks bob. Others, like Anna, who is blond and Germanic-looking, were World War II action figures.


The photographer Mark Hogancamp with Deja, a Barbie he uses in his work.

“I’m building an army of women,” Mr. Hogancamp said. “Women rule the world. We’re just here to keep them company.”

He is represented here as well: his alter ego is an American fighter pilot doll named Captain Hogie, a Nicolas Cage type with smoldering eyes and a deep scar running across his face.

Many of the dolls were gifts. So was the music, Marlene Dietrich and other World War II-era idols singing tinnily on a CD player.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/garde ... anted=1&hp Two more pages and lots of links and photos.

gratifying that the unfortunate fellow was able to snatch some utility from the jaws of futility.