This exhibition featured 43 photographs by Mark Hogancamp, based in Kingston, NY, whose work debuted in Esopus 5 (2005).

On April 8, 2000, Mark was brutally attacked by five men in Kingston, his hometown. The assault left the navy veteran, carpenter, and showroom designer in a coma for nine days; he emerged with brain damage that initially made it impossible for him to walk, eat, or speak. Physical and occupational therapy helped him regain basic motor skills, but after less than a year, he discovered that, without insurance, he could no longer afford it. Determined “not to let those five guys win,” he turned to art as a therapeutic tool. He revisited his childhood hobbies of collecting toy soldiers and building and painting models. Commandeering a pile of scrap wood left behind by a contractor, Mark constructed “Marwencol,” a fictional Belgian town built to one-sixth scale in his backyard. He populated it with military figurines and Barbie dolls representing World War II personages like Patton and Hitler as well as stand-ins for himself, his friends, and his family. Finally, he dusted off an old camera and used it to capture staged events ranging from pitched battles between occupying German and American forces to catfights in the town bar.

I first learned of Mark and his story through his neighbor, Esopus contributor David Naugle, who showed me Mark's photographs in the winter of 2004. I had never seen anything like them and invited Mark to contribute to our fifth issue. The result was “Marwencol on my Mind,” a piece featuring a selection of his extraordinary photographs and the inspiring story behind them. Hogancamp’s work has since been featured in numerous exhibitions (including several others I've curated) both in the U.S. and internationally. Mark's story first reached a broader public with the release of the acclaimed 2010 documentary Marwencol, directed by filmmaker Jeff Malmberg, an Esopus subscriber who first learned about Mark through the magazine. His story went on to inspire Welcome to Marwen, a 2018 feature film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Steve Carell as Mark.

Picturing Marwencol featured 43 photographs taken by Mark of his imaginary town over the course of several years. The images depict everything from intimate, erotically charged moments between lovers to brutal, vividly realized battle scenes. Each of them demonstrates what Jerry Saltz called Mark’s “uncanny feel for body language, psychology, and stage direction.”

An opening reception for the artist took place on September 16, 2010.