The inner life of the German soul is a gloomy thing. The pristine white fabrics of traditional costumes vie to be the brightest, yet the mood around the lunch table is oddly depressed. And here are Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger, bathed in a glaring green aura; they are seated at a table with two other interlocutors, but the conversation seems to have come to a halt. Paul Celan hovers above another circle like a colorless ghost. Elsewhere, children dutifully playing music in an austere farmhouse parlor seem to be lost in another world—a woman by a window, clad in antiquated garb, takes

The four photographs displayed in Dena Yago’s recent show “Heck & The Divested Set” were shot by the artist in Pioneertown, a fake western frontier outpost conceived and built by Hollywood investors and production designers in the 1940s to serve as both a TV/film set and temporary housing for actors and crew members. A rusty town bell atop a wooden facade in Pioneertown, 2015 (Bell); a close-up of a brittle leather saddle in Pioneertown, 2015 (Saddle); a rickety wagon, long abandoned, in Pioneertown, 2015 (Wheel); and a slouching windmill with faded signage in Pioneertown, 2015 (Windmill) (all