SOMETIME A CLEAR LIGHT

A memoir of an American professional photographer’s domestic and working life.

In highly descriptive personal essays and accompanying photos, Jenness recounts her years as a young, single mother and budding creative living in various places around the world, including Alaska and Nigeria, in the second half of the 20th century. The memoir reveals the author’s earnest empathy and her search for connection with local citizenry, wherever she lived, while also serving as a retrospective that aims to recognize the patterns that link its disparate episodes together. The author details cultivated friendships and lapsed relationships with thoughtfulness and what could be considered exaggerated affection at times, and she marvels at her ability to find her own path in the world. Although Jenness’ prose is careful and competent, it’s sometimes awkwardly structured, with narratives of the past interrupted by musings from the present. The photos accompanying the text suffer from a lack of captions or other explanatory details, but this adds a certain down-home intimacy, transforming the work into a reflective document of family history. Where the professionalism shines most is in Jenness’ portraits of young children grinning at the camera, old men in midconversation, and women performing rituals of daily life. The author shows the wisdom and vitality in their faces and the concentration and finesse in their movements, effectively showing the impact they had on her own life. This recollection is made even more touching by the author’s revelation that, in her old age, she’s living with macular degeneration, a hereditary disease that’s caused her to gradually lose her ability even to see a smile in a photograph. The end result is a memoir that’s like the author’s description of Cape Cod as seen from the air: “fragile, a bit battered, yet enduring.” A bit, Jenness adds wryly, “like me, perhaps.”

An easygoing and affecting reflection.