I’ve spent a few inspiring sittings this week with Michael Ashkin’s just released “Long Branch”, published by A-Jump Books. Michael signed copies at the NY Art Book Fair on Saturday. The book is exactly the photographic dose I needed at the moment. The tonal quality of the images, consistent the whole length, is rendered perfectly on the matte pages. No strangers to bookmaking, A-Jump’s Ron Jude and Danielle Mericle are great scouts for understated bodies of work that resonate immensely in book format. No frills, smooth design, where the photographs speak for themselves. Ashkin shows us Long Branch, New Jersey in the beginning of this century, long after the Jersey beach town saw vacationing U.S. presidents and the upper societal crust. We see its blue-collar, residential state undergoing the encroaching infiltration of its conspiring government to transform the town into a polished resort town again, through the shady practice of eminent domain. Ashkin’s survey of the Long Branch is acute in detail, looking in all corners of the town, working with a tasteful visual looseness and curiosity that I prefer to formal photographic practice. . . I feel right behind the lens, investigating Long Branch with an unpretentious gaze. The juxtaposing of elements in some photographs is clearly made by a wise eye. I even caught myself chuckling at the subliminal absurdities of a few views. Rather than being engaged strictly in a documentary work, Ashkin’s images put me in a somewhat fictional state, in a strange land . . . . I love the experience.
Long Branch by Michael Ashkin (A-Jump Books, 2014)
