Morgan Ashcom: Distortions: Recent Works and Fictional Directions in Photography

Morgan Ashcom is an artist and educator living in New York City. Although he lives in a major metropolitan area his work is influenced by the Virginia landscape around the farm where he grew up. His first photobook, L​eviathan, ​emerged from his experience at a remote community in southeast Ohio. While the photographs were made in the rolling hills of Appalachia, Ashcom followed themes of escape and confrontation on the sea suggesting a narrative where these worlds have converged. Since the completion and publication of L​eviathan, he has been photographing an ongoing project titled W​hat the Living Carry. ​Through a fictional and subjective photographic account, W​hat the Living Carry d​raws on the motif of the forest as a canvas for collective subconscious projections rooted in the literature and archetypes of rural America.