digressions: a blog

West Saint Paul, Minnesota, © TJ Proechel

© Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan

Here’s potentially the most eloquent sentence I’ve ever written on this blog: I like Ahorn Magazine a lot. Combining both an interest in defining how past greats influenced the art form with a look at contemporary practices, Ahorn has a little bit of everything. Throughout a given issue, the editors Anya and Daniel definitely allow their poetic sensibility to influence the work and essays displayed, but they still allow a more scientific, periphery-like engagement to take place. Thus you’ll find TJ Proechel‘s Dreamhouse and my essay on the influential Evidence, coupled with an essay by Amy Stein on Doug Dubois’ recent monograph and Jessica Backhaus‘ personal narrative about Gisèle Freund. The content is definitely varied, which makes for a wholly interesting read. The graphic design is stellar to boot.

An excerpt from the essay I have featured in this issue:

And yet, almost strictly due to the sequencing, the pictures take on a cryptically ethereal feel. If you spend a few seconds with each image outside of the immediate context, you can realistically see the scenes as normal activity, industrial or otherwise. Again, the cropping, use of flash, and the foreign objects hint at a deeper psychology that decentralizes each element in the photograph into the equivocal whole.