Jeffrey Silverthorne: Directions for Leaving: Photographs 1971-2006

Over the past 35 years, writes Annie Proulx (author of Brokeback Mountain and The Shipping News) in her introduction to this retrospective look at the photographic oeuvre of Jeffrey Silverthorne (born 1946), "Silverthorne has photographed authority figures, nudes, prostitutes, prisoners, illegal immigrants, border bars and cheap hotel rooms, carnival denizens, people in the fringe worlds of American society, moribund animals, himself and the dead. He is internationally known for the postmortem genre he pioneered, photographs of the dead that shocked and repelled even as they fascinated." Framed in stark and uncompromising compositions, Silverthorne's subjects often regard the viewer with a defiant indifference; his work melds portraiture with a kind of detached photodocumentary impulse à la Diane Arbus. In exploring marginal characters and milieux, he confronts us with our own sense of disgust and the grotesque. This volume also includes a contribution by Robert Frank and an interview by Detroit rocker Cary Loren.