Origins, or What We Carry

Origins, or What We Carry combines archival and contemporary images – photographs and maps – and original text to tell the story of one family’s 1924 migration from Europe to Canada. 

The text describes the dreams, unmet aspirations, and complicated legacy of this family through the lens of the objects they carried with them on their migration. These objects often become protagonists in the tales we tell. In some of the stories objects play the part of mere travelling companions, dismissed cordially once their use is fulfilled. But in others, the objects play a larger role. These objects are more than companions.They are rapporteurs. They are raconteurs. Through equal parts fact and fancy, they make into an origin story these disparate and unreliable accounts about the lives of sometimes ordinary and occasionally extraordinary people and things. 

Origins, or What We Carry is a migration story but bends the narrative to address the limits of cultural transfer and the malleability of and inconsistencies inherent in historical perspective, interpretation, and memory.