For photographer Terry Gydesen, producing a book of photographs about the late Senator Paul Wellstone was a form of grieving and healing. Judging from the hundreds of people who showed up at a celebration to launch the book earlier this month, her effort has helped many others as well.

?The response has filled me with a lot of love,? Gydesen said during a recent interview at her northeast Minneapolis studio.

Surrounded by photos taken during Wellstone?s election campaigns, Gydesen talked about what drew her to Wellstone as a subject and why she returned to photograph him, just days before the Oct. 25, 2002, plane crash that killed him; his wife, Sheila; daughter, Marcia; three aides and two pilots.

Terry Gydesen in her northeast Minneapolis studio.

?I?d never seen anybody like this before,? Gydesen said, recalling her first encounters with the fuzzy-haired Carleton College professor, running an underdog campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1990.

?He walked in and just started to hug everybody. He was a bundle of energy in such a small package.?

At first, Gydesen focused simply on getting good shots; one of her favorites is a scene of Wellstone and residents of a senior center in Duluth. A painting depicting a man praying hangs on the wall, next to where Wellstone chats with a resident.

But soon, she found herself drawn more closely to his ideas and his vision ? hoping he would win.

Gydesen said a particularly poignant photo is one taken when Wellstone arrived in Washington, D.C, for his first term. It pictures former Vice President Walter Mondale greeting him outside the U.S. Capitol. Twelve years later, Mondale would be drafted to take Wellstone?s place on the November 2003 ballot.

?He was there for him at the beginning and he was there for him at the end,? Gydesen said.

During the 1990s, Gydesen also photographed several other candidates, including the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan and Jerry Brown, a move that left her worn out and cynical, she recalled. She was reluctant to return to the Wellstone campaign for a third time in 2002, when Wellstone announced his vote against a Congressional resolution authorizing the president to declare war on Iraq.

?I got re-energized when Paul spoke out against the war,? Gydesen said. Camera in hand, she was back at the Wellstone office, ready to pick up a campaign schedule, when word came that his plane was missing. She put the camera aside, but when the deaths were confirmed and the mourning started, a good friend convinced her that she needed to take pictures.

The last section of the book features photos from the 13 days after the plane crash leading up to the election. Mourners gather tearfully in front of the campaign headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of flowers, mementoes and messages. A young campaign worker, disheartened by Mondale?s defeat, lies exhausted on a couch.

The cover of Gydesen's book features a jubilant Paul and Sheila Wellstone.

The book, ?Twelve Years and Thirteen Days: Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone,? is published by University of Minnesota Press. It includes a foreword by Mondale and an essay by Wellstone campaign manager Jeff Blodgett.

The photos also will be featured in a special exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota?s Minneapolis campus, Nov. 18 to Dec. 19.

With the book finished, Gydesen is ready to move on to other projects. But her next subject won?t be far afield: with funding from the McKnight Foundation, she will be documenting people who are carrying on the Wellstone legacy.

?Passion is the theme that runs through every project that I?ve done,? she said. ?And Paul was passion.?

For more information about the book, visit Gydesen?s website, www.terrygydesen.com

An interview with Gydesen is featured on this week?s Minnesota at Work cable TV program.