Family history and its mirror in snapshot photography are always characterized by what is left out: the happy memories in the photo album depend on the forgetting of mental illness, repressive sex roles, or, particularly in the South, race relations. Ann Holcomb’s recent mixed-media photographs are concerned with the return of the repressed, the reconsideration of the whole context of family history. She has rephotographed family pictures, adding words, objects, and oblique title-sentences. The result is an allusive narrative of illness, discrimination, and folklore.

The photographs that were