What the Living Carry ***signiert

What the Living Car­ry unveils a small town named Hoy’s Fork, situa­ted in the Ame­ri­can South. Drawing on memo­ries of the rural set­ting in which he grew up, Vir­gi­ni­an pho­to­gra­pher Mor­gan Ash­com brings tog­e­ther pho­to­graphs, type-writ­ten let­ters and a hand-drawn map to build a fic­tio­n­al nar­ra­ti­ve of a forebo­ding place.

Lea­ding us on a trail through the town and its sur­roun­ding forest, Ash­com pres­ents sce­nes that point to a mys­te­rious histo­ry, and peop­le who­se fami­li­al con­nec­tions remain unknown: a for­lorn old man, with cham­pa­gne to hand, recli­nes on the cor­ro­ding steps of a once grand home; a bloo­di­ed mat­tress is car­ri­ed through an over­grown field; a soli­ta­ry child bur­rows into a mea­dow, while on the streets, a man duti­ful­ly cleans a white picket fence – a visi­on that belies a local mural of a distant, anci­ent land.

Intersper­sing this frag­men­ted nar­ra­ti­ve is a set of texts – four let­ters respon­ding to ‘Morgan’s’ request for DNA ana­ly­sis – writ­ten by ‘Euge­ne’ of the ‘Cen­ter for Epi­ge­ne­tics and Well­ness of the Spi­rit’. If What the Living Car­ry pro­vi­des a set of clues to unra­vel the enig­ma behind this stran­ge world, it is through a visu­al record that is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly auto­bio­gra­phi­cal and ima­gi­ned, and incli­ned to elude.