© Morgan Ashcom
© Morgan Ashcom
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” American writer William Faulkner wrote in the 1951 novel, Requiem for a Nun, recognising the long shadows that hang over us. A Mississippi native and Nobel Prize laureate, Faulkner’s words speak a profound truth about the American South, a land shrouded in myth and mystery, where illusion and reality are forever intertwined in the tales people tell.
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Photographer Morgan Ashcom, a native of Free Union, Virginia, understands this underlying truth: our stories have just as much (if not more) influence on our identity than the facts themselves. Like Faulkner, Ashcom understands that the South is not so much a “geographical place” as it is an “emotional idea,” one which he deftly explores in What the Living Carry, a new exhibition currently on view at Candela Books + Gallery to time with the publication of a monograph by the same name from MACK Books.
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What the Living Carry tells the story of life in a fictional Southern town named Hoys Fork, where memories of the past perfume the air like bouquets of magnolias blossoming on the trees. The town is nestled in the landscape, a timeless space that evokes the myths of how the country was formed, driven by a belief in Manifest Destiny: that people are entitled to take what is not rightfully theirs.
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Read the Full Story at Huck Online
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© Morgan Ashcom
© Morgan Ashcom