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This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers
In the spirit of James Agee and W. G. Sebald, a profound work of literary art wedded to photographs.
As a journalist suddenly skeptical of the power of words to tell the deepest truths of other people’s stories, Jeff Sharlet turned to taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram―images that he then reflected on in words of extraordinary intimacy and power. A visionary work of radical empathy, this collection of images and reflections is framed by the two years between his father’s heart attack and his own, a time defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers: night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless and the lost (or merely disoriented), addicts and people on the margins.
A book that erases all boundaries between author and subject and reader, between the “safe” and the afflicted, This Brilliant Darkness is a riveting, light-bearing inquiry into the ways we live with suffering.
As a journalist suddenly skeptical of the power of words to tell the deepest truths of other people’s stories, Jeff Sharlet turned to taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram―images that he then reflected on in words of extraordinary intimacy and power. A visionary work of radical empathy, this collection of images and reflections is framed by the two years between his father’s heart attack and his own, a time defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers: night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless and the lost (or merely disoriented), addicts and people on the margins.
A book that erases all boundaries between author and subject and reader, between the “safe” and the afflicted, This Brilliant Darkness is a riveting, light-bearing inquiry into the ways we live with suffering.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published February 11, 2020
72 people are currently reading
2445 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Sharlet
17 books435 followersJeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author and editor of eight books of creative nonfiction and photography, including The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, The Family—adapted into a Netflix documentary series of the same name hosted by Sharlet—and This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers. Sharlet is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Harper's, and Rolling Stone, and an editor-at-large for VQR. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, New York, Bookforum, and other publications. His writing on Russia’s anti-LGBTQIA+ crusade earned the National Magazine Award and his writing on anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns in Uganda earned the Molly National Journalism Prize, the Outright International’s Outspoken Award, and the Americans United Person of the Year Award, among others. He has served as a Nonfiction Panel Chair for the National Book Award and received multiple fellowships from MacDowell. Sharlet is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He lives in Vermont, where he is trying to learn the names of plants.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
May 12, 2020
Like Humans of New York, but with better writing and much grittier.
February 17, 2020
What a beautiful and deeply important book for 2020, another election year when we’ll hear rhetoric without action, and lose touch yet again with the majority who suffer without representation. Hopefully this book cracks a few of us open and serves as a reminder that we can’t know what’s best for all if we’re not willing to get out there and listen to the most vulnerable amongst us.
May 30, 2020
This book reminded me a lot of "Work and Other Sins" by Charlie LeDuff: short, quirky stories with creative perspectives of the people in plain view that we choose not to see. LeDuff's book was focused on the five boroughs of NYC whereas Sharlet finds his subjects in the rural northeast USA, Ireland, Russia and Los Angeles.
Sharlet employs a spare, almost but not quite poetic writing style that gives the book its unique essence. I read many passages two and three times to see if I read them correctly and ultimately to understand the subtle messaging. This may be a love it or hate it style for most readers; as much as I enjoyed it I don't think I'd want to read anything similar on a regular basis.
Sharlet employs a spare, almost but not quite poetic writing style that gives the book its unique essence. I read many passages two and three times to see if I read them correctly and ultimately to understand the subtle messaging. This may be a love it or hate it style for most readers; as much as I enjoyed it I don't think I'd want to read anything similar on a regular basis.
December 12, 2020
jeff sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us. taking snapshots & posting them on instagram, he also writes short true stories that bloomed into documentary - this work began when his father had a heart attack and two years later, jeff had a heart attack of his own. during those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road and meeting strangers.
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. this is such an honest collection which kinda reminds me of humans of new york by brandon stanton. definitely not a book to make you feel better as jeff documents about the hardships & harsh realities of people's lives. i find some of the stories a little bit off but overall, it is still a decent read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. this is such an honest collection which kinda reminds me of humans of new york by brandon stanton. definitely not a book to make you feel better as jeff documents about the hardships & harsh realities of people's lives. i find some of the stories a little bit off but overall, it is still a decent read.
October 8, 2020
Can I just say, I love this book. If you're a people watcher or wonder about a stranger's life story, then this is a perfect fit.
A heart-rending collection of people that crossed paths with Jeff Sharlet throughout his career.
From his time documenting the homeless population on Skid Row in California, to the death of a man at the hands of the police, to the rise of Neo-fascists targeting the LGBTQ community in Russian towns, all the way down to everyday folks on his travels visiting his sick father.
It's an amazing work.
So much so I read it twice. And after returning this to my library, I'm probably going to buy it.
A heart-rending collection of people that crossed paths with Jeff Sharlet throughout his career.
From his time documenting the homeless population on Skid Row in California, to the death of a man at the hands of the police, to the rise of Neo-fascists targeting the LGBTQ community in Russian towns, all the way down to everyday folks on his travels visiting his sick father.
It's an amazing work.
So much so I read it twice. And after returning this to my library, I'm probably going to buy it.
July 10, 2020
What a beautiful, amazing book. I read it in 2.5 sittings, which lasted quite a while--but it's the type of book that absorbs. The arc of the book is unconventional, but the stories that fill its pages are unique and filled with so much soul. Sharlet has a great way of presenting our grotesque, blossoming humanity without sacrificing the voices of the people he profiles. The photography is gritty, grizzly, and makes for all the more power within the pages.
March 5, 2020
I'm torn - I think this is one of the most unique books I have ever read, yet I don't really have any big takeaways from it. It was a cool experience with the form, but that's about it.
March 1, 2020
An emotional, heartfelt requiem on the painful parts of humanity that gives gentle audience to the people, places, and experiences that make most of us avert our gaze.
Neatly held in place by the bookends of the author’s father’s heart attack and his own, This Brilliant Darkness is a two year photo-journal of the people in society that fill the castes of Unnoticed and Untouchable. Sharlet brings a humane gentleness to his interactions with the self-proclaimed junkies, the night shift workers, the illegal LGBTQ Russians, and the underserved mentally ill suffering from homelessness. It’s Sharlet’s quiet kindness, his lack of authoritative pushiness, and his nonjudgmental portrayal of his subjects that really captivated me and made me feel like he didn’t have an agenda beyond treating everyone and complex human individuals. His was a quiet voice without a story to push, beyond the amplification of the stories he was hearing.
Beautiful, emotional, and above all, a reminder that it will be dark soon, and we lose very little by extending kindness.
Neatly held in place by the bookends of the author’s father’s heart attack and his own, This Brilliant Darkness is a two year photo-journal of the people in society that fill the castes of Unnoticed and Untouchable. Sharlet brings a humane gentleness to his interactions with the self-proclaimed junkies, the night shift workers, the illegal LGBTQ Russians, and the underserved mentally ill suffering from homelessness. It’s Sharlet’s quiet kindness, his lack of authoritative pushiness, and his nonjudgmental portrayal of his subjects that really captivated me and made me feel like he didn’t have an agenda beyond treating everyone and complex human individuals. His was a quiet voice without a story to push, beyond the amplification of the stories he was hearing.
Beautiful, emotional, and above all, a reminder that it will be dark soon, and we lose very little by extending kindness.
March 1, 2020
What a beautiful surprise of a book. Photographs and stories, most of them set-piece length. A particularly beautiful one about Russians. A few of those. Quite good.
November 27, 2020
Feeling inexplicable joy and happiness? Needing a good dose of depression and hopelessness? Then this is the book for you! The 3 stars is because it is a well crafted, important book. If I complied literally with the Goodreads star system it would have been a 1 star. I did not like it, because I don't like to read true stories of ruined lives whether by their own stupid choices or mistreatment. It does a great job of helping you feel the hopelessness so many live with. I heard a recommendation about the book or the author on the radio and thought I'd check it out.
It's a collection of stories about hard-luck people interviewed by the author: some dead-end night shift job workers, druggies, prostitutes, a homeless immigrant killed by police in LA, gays trying to survive in Russia under recent anti-gay legislation and culture, a 60ish woman on public assistance in Schenectady NY who probably should be in a mental institution. And a little about his own life.
It's a collection of stories about hard-luck people interviewed by the author: some dead-end night shift job workers, druggies, prostitutes, a homeless immigrant killed by police in LA, gays trying to survive in Russia under recent anti-gay legislation and culture, a 60ish woman on public assistance in Schenectady NY who probably should be in a mental institution. And a little about his own life.
February 29, 2020
Took a long break in the middle of reading this (short) book, and I wish I hadn’t, because by the time I came back it felt like a chore. But it’s not at all—the book is short, super readable, and really beautiful, and I think if I’d read it all at once I’d be giving it an even higher rating. It’s kind of a collection of Humans of New York-style vignettes, though most of the time there isn’t really a core theme, lesson, or arc in each story.
I really like the way Jeff Sharlet focuses on other people and how, by telling their stories, he sort of tells his own. It reminds me of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy in that way. As he writes, “I am a reporter, and this is a book of other people’s lives, lives that became, for a moment—the duration of a snapshot—my life, too.” The books feels kind of lonely and isolating, but somehow in a comforting way. I felt like Sharlet and I were two strangers on a road trip together, driving across the country in the middle of the night, even in the sections that weren’t focused on actual night-shift stories.
You feel like you’re learning about people on the margins, people whose stories are usually ignored: the elderly, the homeless, the mentally ill, the disabled. Particularly gutting is the story of Charly Keunang, an unarmed Cameroonian man killed by police on Skid Row, whose story received little media attention due to the stigma of homelessness. That chapter also paints a vivid portrait of life in that community—the whole book is so immersive and transporting. I also love the chapter when Sharlet interviews young gay people facing discrimination and violence in Russia.
This whole book is so moving and sad, yet somehow hopeful. It ends with the heart attack Sharlet had two years after his father’s own heart attack, and Sharlet suddenly becomes much more conscious of his own mortality, of the ways his body will eventually fail like everyone’s does. And yet the ending, though somber, doesn’t feel bleak or devastating—it’s simply realistic, and yet it manages to revel in all the world’s beauty that, somehow, coexists with its darkness.
A number of quotes I particularly loved:
- “‘I could smoke,’ she says. Hands zip-tied together, she’d held on to her cigarette. That’s what she remembers.”
- “God is more than I need. I prefer things, and the people who tend them.”
- “Zoya will remain hidden. At Secrets she dances in the light, red and blue glinting off her fake badges. Real life, she says, is for dark rooms.”
- “Night walking through snow-covered fields. Waiting for the words to return. Not sure I need them to. Even a snapshot of the dark-that-isn’t-dark-at-all might be more than I want to set down. Never before in my life has just being here—with the fox and the doe and the owl, with my pulse and my fears and the frozen air hot in my throat—felt like so much.”
- “This moment. The color. The yellow slash of the headlights across the snow. The red in my veins. This blue sky, same as the snow-covered land. This brilliant darkness, with which I am coming to terms.”
I really like the way Jeff Sharlet focuses on other people and how, by telling their stories, he sort of tells his own. It reminds me of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy in that way. As he writes, “I am a reporter, and this is a book of other people’s lives, lives that became, for a moment—the duration of a snapshot—my life, too.” The books feels kind of lonely and isolating, but somehow in a comforting way. I felt like Sharlet and I were two strangers on a road trip together, driving across the country in the middle of the night, even in the sections that weren’t focused on actual night-shift stories.
You feel like you’re learning about people on the margins, people whose stories are usually ignored: the elderly, the homeless, the mentally ill, the disabled. Particularly gutting is the story of Charly Keunang, an unarmed Cameroonian man killed by police on Skid Row, whose story received little media attention due to the stigma of homelessness. That chapter also paints a vivid portrait of life in that community—the whole book is so immersive and transporting. I also love the chapter when Sharlet interviews young gay people facing discrimination and violence in Russia.
This whole book is so moving and sad, yet somehow hopeful. It ends with the heart attack Sharlet had two years after his father’s own heart attack, and Sharlet suddenly becomes much more conscious of his own mortality, of the ways his body will eventually fail like everyone’s does. And yet the ending, though somber, doesn’t feel bleak or devastating—it’s simply realistic, and yet it manages to revel in all the world’s beauty that, somehow, coexists with its darkness.
A number of quotes I particularly loved:
- “‘I could smoke,’ she says. Hands zip-tied together, she’d held on to her cigarette. That’s what she remembers.”
- “God is more than I need. I prefer things, and the people who tend them.”
- “Zoya will remain hidden. At Secrets she dances in the light, red and blue glinting off her fake badges. Real life, she says, is for dark rooms.”
- “Night walking through snow-covered fields. Waiting for the words to return. Not sure I need them to. Even a snapshot of the dark-that-isn’t-dark-at-all might be more than I want to set down. Never before in my life has just being here—with the fox and the doe and the owl, with my pulse and my fears and the frozen air hot in my throat—felt like so much.”
- “This moment. The color. The yellow slash of the headlights across the snow. The red in my veins. This blue sky, same as the snow-covered land. This brilliant darkness, with which I am coming to terms.”
March 8, 2020
How often do we encounter a book that is tough, difficult, and makes us uncomfortable?
Jeff Sharlet’s The Brilliant Darkness is this kind of book. He tells stories of strangers: people with guns, people with knives, homeless and house-less people, people living in the motels, the far-rights, the neo-fascists, the addicts, the anti-homosexuals, but they are also fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. They are people who associate with the “dark side” of our society, and who always frighten us.
Their stories are real and hard like rocks that hit you while reading. But these stories are also soft and sometimes touching because they are stories about human’s suffering and surviving, about mother calling her son back home, about father caring about his son, about the elder surviving alone by herself, and about people fighting for their and their lover’s future.
Jeff’s language is not sentimental but succinct, glum, and empathetic. He writes without direct criticism or judgement towards neither individual nor social system, but maintains his personal value. The snapshots taken by Jeff are granitic and harsh, but beautiful, which both alienate our everyday life and normalize the life of people in the “dark.”
Overall, The Brilliant Darkness is a powerful book with deep empathy. It illuminates the darkness part of our society: a darkness that is always exposed to but ignored by us; a darkness that is far away but no different from our own life.
Jeff Sharlet’s The Brilliant Darkness is this kind of book. He tells stories of strangers: people with guns, people with knives, homeless and house-less people, people living in the motels, the far-rights, the neo-fascists, the addicts, the anti-homosexuals, but they are also fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. They are people who associate with the “dark side” of our society, and who always frighten us.
Their stories are real and hard like rocks that hit you while reading. But these stories are also soft and sometimes touching because they are stories about human’s suffering and surviving, about mother calling her son back home, about father caring about his son, about the elder surviving alone by herself, and about people fighting for their and their lover’s future.
Jeff’s language is not sentimental but succinct, glum, and empathetic. He writes without direct criticism or judgement towards neither individual nor social system, but maintains his personal value. The snapshots taken by Jeff are granitic and harsh, but beautiful, which both alienate our everyday life and normalize the life of people in the “dark.”
Overall, The Brilliant Darkness is a powerful book with deep empathy. It illuminates the darkness part of our society: a darkness that is always exposed to but ignored by us; a darkness that is far away but no different from our own life.
January 20, 2022
This book belongs on the shelf right next to Charlie Leduff’s magnificent “Work and Other Sins.” In it, Leduff would find a companion in Sharlet, a photographer and journalist whose nightly excursions bring him in touch with other travelers of the darkness. His sparsely worded entries bring him into nightly meetings with overworked bakers, camping out on LA's infamous Skid Row, detailing the fear and quiet strength of gays in Putin’s Russia, and the denizens of a bleak
motel in upstate NY. This book is many things but none more important than a work of tremendous compassion and empathy. Sean Penn once said of the writer Charles Bukowski and filmmaker John Cassavetes that they were artists who found poetry where there was none. You can add Sharlet to that list.
motel in upstate NY. This book is many things but none more important than a work of tremendous compassion and empathy. Sean Penn once said of the writer Charles Bukowski and filmmaker John Cassavetes that they were artists who found poetry where there was none. You can add Sharlet to that list.
September 2, 2025
Everyone has a story to tell.
I'm sure you've heard it said, seen it on an inspirational poster, had it come across your feed as a meme--most likely numerous times in different guises. Everyone has a story to tell. Google's "AI Overview" tells me, above my search results for the phrase:
The people featured in this book are those that Game of Thrones might call "broken and sullied." People working the night shift at 24-hour stops along the road; fellow customers; an older woman who has spent her life bouncing around the adult social services system; underground, recently outlawed LGBTQ community members in Russia; those who threaten and beat them; a long middle section about the death and life of an undocumented immigrant living on the street in Skid Row in L.A. who was shot by police. Random encounters and pursued, journalistic ones. Working people, addicts, homeless, the mentally ill. Sharlet doesn't tune them out as background noise the way the vast majority of us do--he gives them his time, attention, and compassion and, in this book, shares their humanity.
I'm reminded of the title of an old comic book series I stumbled across on the shelves of my local shop when I was in college; I think I still have a few issues in a box somewhere, though I remember nothing about them but the name: "Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children." It's not accurate, yet it seems fitting.
This is a quietly powerful, understated book that presents--and demonstrates--humanity.
-----
A few brief samples:
I'm sure you've heard it said, seen it on an inspirational poster, had it come across your feed as a meme--most likely numerous times in different guises. Everyone has a story to tell. Google's "AI Overview" tells me, above my search results for the phrase:
It suggests that everyone possesses a unique personal narrative, shaped by their joys, struggles, and triumphs, which can be a source of connection, inspiration, and understanding when shared with others. The concept is often linked to the idea that listening to these stories fosters empathy and a deeper connection between people.One of my favorite guises for the idea is the word "sonder" as first defined in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.The subtitle of this book is "A Book of Strangers," but I don't think that's accurate. I think a more apt name for what Sharlet has accomplished here is the title of a book--and movement--by Valerie Kaur: "See No Strangers." Because this book is about Sharlet taking time for those society often shuns to the exile of being unwanted, condemned to a status of permanent stranger, of Sharlet taking the time to really see them. Not as strangers, but as people. He takes a moment to tell their stories, documents his interactions with them, makes them the protagonists of this collection of reported moments.
The people featured in this book are those that Game of Thrones might call "broken and sullied." People working the night shift at 24-hour stops along the road; fellow customers; an older woman who has spent her life bouncing around the adult social services system; underground, recently outlawed LGBTQ community members in Russia; those who threaten and beat them; a long middle section about the death and life of an undocumented immigrant living on the street in Skid Row in L.A. who was shot by police. Random encounters and pursued, journalistic ones. Working people, addicts, homeless, the mentally ill. Sharlet doesn't tune them out as background noise the way the vast majority of us do--he gives them his time, attention, and compassion and, in this book, shares their humanity.
I'm reminded of the title of an old comic book series I stumbled across on the shelves of my local shop when I was in college; I think I still have a few issues in a box somewhere, though I remember nothing about them but the name: "Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children." It's not accurate, yet it seems fitting.
This is a quietly powerful, understated book that presents--and demonstrates--humanity.
-----
A few brief samples:
She knows some English, but she speaks mostly in Russian. Explaining her view of Russia's rising homophobia, she dictates to Zhenya: "Putin needs external enemies and internal enemies. The external enemies are the U.S. and Europe. Internal enemies they had to think about. The ethnic topic is dangerous. Two wars in the Caucasus, a third one, nobody knows how it will end. Jews? After Hitler, it's not kosher. We"--she waves a hand at herself and Zhenya--"are the ideal. We are everywhere, we don't look different, but we are." She inhales. She's one of those smokers who holds your eyes when she's smoking. Cigarettes disappear into her lungs. She says, in English: "It's our turn. Just our turn." She exhales. She has a pleasant smile.
-----
Her hands fall into her lap, her face goes still. For a moment she's one kind of lovely. Then she flicks back her hair, sends her hands aloft, and she is Mary Mazur, sixty-one, her own woman. "I don't care if I make bad choices!" Her hands whirl, point, shake, conduct. "I don't care a rat's spit! I'm not like everybody else!" She wouldn't want to be. "It's my brain. I'll do what I want with it."
-----
Man o man the longer I think about this, the longer I linger instead of going forward, the more I see the problem with the way stories pile up in your head, too many stories of all the things we've seen. They don't just haunt you. The haunting, that's just the outer shell. They give you futures as well as pasts. Look at your daughter and see Alice or Jared. You realize just how fragile everything is. Instead of standing on land you realize you're on a boat, and it's a small boat, and the ocean is all around you, and the best hope is just to stay on the boat, because there is no land.
June 25, 2020
When you rate a book a five, what do you say about it? What words can you use to describe it? Well, I'm going to call it invasive. Now Sharlet's not invasive; anything but. But his book-with Jared and Charly and Mary and Alice and Hilda and Paige and Erica and Larry and Michael and Siobhan and Aidan and Elana and Anya and Alex and Timur( if that's even their names; Sharlet says our names are for us alone)-is itself invasive for the reader. These people, their photos, they're all in there, in me. And they won't come out and I don't want them to come out. A plant named Bandit, plastic praying hands from the Treasure Center, insomniac coffee and donuts, matter-of-factly courageous gay young Russians, non-racist racists, spice, crack, heroin, children given away, a black man on his back on a sidewalk in Skid Row, unarmed and dead, murdered by those who claim they serve and protect, falsely claimed heroism, and heart attacks- all find purchase here. Some are alive, some were alive and others, who knows? Is there any nobility here? Any heroes? No, because I have not a clue what is noble and no, because "hero" has been so diluted that heroism is now claimed for doing what we should do every day as humans. Read some quotes-"General Jeff likes ambulances. 'They pick up the bodies, the dead ones and the dying ones and all those that haven't quite gotten there.'" "'I [Juju] was a man once, too,' he says." This describes an encounter in Walmart between a clerk and a wheelchair bound woman who lives in a motel and uses her bathtub as a pantry- "'I don't think we have a Sunbeam,' says the clerk. He pauses. Takes in the fullness of Mary Mazur. ...Her foot. The wounds. The smell. It's rich, the smell. As complicated as her condition. Sweat and shit and dust. And lasagna. Frozen food thawed at room temperature over days, and the smell of what remains in the ring of cans in which Mary sits in the darkness, and flies, maggots if she's too tired to clean....The clerk takes a big breath-that's what I did too, the first time, it's what we do when we encounter a human being around whom the veil of the world is very thin-and he does not turn away. He does not turn away [italics]. He doesn't smile, either. ...'I get it,' he says. 'You gotta have your Sunbeam.'" I hope that stays with me forever. And, finally, some examples of Sharlet's writing-"And then that gets me, too.-'a million of these stories' isn't really, you know, consolation. It's like an ocean and our seemingly stable lives are little boats we mistake for land." "What to call the blue that pours into the open space of the day's collapse?" You know, Sharlet tries really hard in this book. Tries really hard with people most of us, if we even see them, dismiss instantly. But Sharlet sees and never dismisses. He tries really hard and, in the end, that's the best any of us can do.
March 7, 2020
This Brilliant Darkness, A Book if Strangers, by Jeff Sharlet (pp 315. Published 2020. In some ways this is an oddly interesting book: a collection of stories illustrated with photos taken by the author, who upfront claims not to be a photographer. By the look of his shots, he’s right: his phone snapshots are dark, fuzzy, often indistinct, and lacking detail. His stories, ranging from a single paragraph to many pages, are about people he’s met on the street. These are not people most of us have dinner with. Like his photos, the people he writes about are often dark, fuzzy, indistinct, and lacking detail. When he does provide detail, it made me wonder if he’d have been better off keeping them out of focus given the grimness of their lives. It took me 100 or so pages to realize that hidden in the shadows of his pictures are the parts of each story we don’t know, the backstories to what we learn about this range of characters, their secrets, their histories, their futures, and even our own secrets. The author was fearless and generous, spending time with people we mostly walk around or step over on our way to work. Or consciously avoid to maintain our perception of security. When I scrutinized the faces of the people captured in his photography, I got the unsettled feeling that I saw glimpses of myself.
May 21, 2020
Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, this was an excellent book for me to read. I was inspired by his courageous, honest engagement with the people he met, got to know, and photographed for this book. I appreciated the many ways in which he truly noticed and saw them... not only with his camera, but with his eyes, ears, and heart. With social distancing making it harder to "randomly" strike up conversations with people met in public, especially those on the margins of society, Sharlet's stories of meeting people in out-of-the-way times and places was particularly compelling. I find myself thinking about all the light that I'm missing in situations that seem dark, in people who lie far beyond the sweep of my gaze in ordinary, daylight routines. The desire to build a world where everyone whom he meet, and all the people like them who he doesn't, are known, cared for, and loved as they are comes through clearly for me in this book, and reminds me not to give up on that dream in my own life and work as so much seems dark and uncertain.
July 7, 2020
A book about forgotten people whose stories force the reader to consider which stories are worth telling and why.
"I walked him to his car and returned us to our vacation rental,and then I drove him home. The blue had gone from his color, but what remained was ash. As if he was becoming a black and white picture. He listed in his seat, like a boat taking water."
"But he had been sick, I realized then, for a long time. He'd been pinned to his couch by the growing pressure in his chest, his broad frame withering, his breath shallowing, not so much in and out as skimming across him."
"...any social worker has a million of these stories. And then that gets me too--'a million of these stories' isn't really, you know, consolation. It's like an ocean and our seemingly stable lives are little boats we mistake for land."
"Grief filled me with a sense of time like an ocean, not a line on which we travel but a volume in which we're submerged."
"I walked him to his car and returned us to our vacation rental,and then I drove him home. The blue had gone from his color, but what remained was ash. As if he was becoming a black and white picture. He listed in his seat, like a boat taking water."
"But he had been sick, I realized then, for a long time. He'd been pinned to his couch by the growing pressure in his chest, his broad frame withering, his breath shallowing, not so much in and out as skimming across him."
"...any social worker has a million of these stories. And then that gets me too--'a million of these stories' isn't really, you know, consolation. It's like an ocean and our seemingly stable lives are little boats we mistake for land."
"Grief filled me with a sense of time like an ocean, not a line on which we travel but a volume in which we're submerged."
September 12, 2021
This book is extraordinary and weird and quite compelling. It's also very hard to pigeonhole. I instantly bought it for several people - because it's something I want others to experience. It has a familial relationship to Humans of New York - what with the pictures combined with text - but it's rather more unsettling.
p. 206:
p. 266: "...Pinky is no name for a bird."
p. 206:
I should mention that Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," the long, haunted version Jeff Buckley recorded before he drowned, has been playing through this account of the fourth Duma kiss-in...[snip]...Hymns–and standards, which is what this really is, like "My Funny Valentine", or "I Will Always Love You"–the way they work, when they work, is that they sound like they've always been there, waiting; only suddenly they're breathtakingly, perfectly intimate to you. They change the way you feel time.
p. 266: "...Pinky is no name for a bird."
August 28, 2023
An engaging collection of photographs and vignettes of the author interviewing strangers; I appreciated the way that the author shows compassion with his subjects and displays non judgement while also never veering into exploitative territory during his presentation of people. Almost all of the people he interviews are people who have metaphorically fallen through the cracks of society (unhoused individuals, sex workers, night shift workers, LGBTQ+ people in Russia, etc.) and I could imagine a version of this book that feels like ogling or trauma porn, and instead, it was very respectful. I've never quite read a book before that so closely resembles the structure in which I meet people on a daily basis as a paramedic.
March 14, 2020
Stunning combination of narrative and images (photos from the author’s phone) of the most ignored people and places in our cities around the world. People who live in Skid Row, homeless in the U.S., being gay in Russia, poor in Africa.
An illustrated insomniac’s obsessive story of life on the edge, framed by his own deep grief and a sort of genetic ennui. This book reminded me of my own time working as the maintenance man at a private home for schizophrenic young adults and teens. Deep crazy but not really. When I worked there I have always felt like I had a better understanding of the people on the mental health fringe.
An illustrated insomniac’s obsessive story of life on the edge, framed by his own deep grief and a sort of genetic ennui. This book reminded me of my own time working as the maintenance man at a private home for schizophrenic young adults and teens. Deep crazy but not really. When I worked there I have always felt like I had a better understanding of the people on the mental health fringe.
March 15, 2020
How to describe this plaintive, splendid book? An old-school album of digital photos, a collection of the testimonies of forgotten people, true and evanescent. A series of ... what? ... prayers?, intercessions towards no personally named or actually-believed-in god, but divine all the same.
Reading it, seeing it feels like a Lenten journey. Disconsolate. Beatific. With wild beasts and attended by angels. "Never before in my life," writes the author, "has just being here - with the fox and the doe and the owl, with my pulse and my fears and the frozen air hot in my throat - felt like so much."
Reading it, seeing it feels like a Lenten journey. Disconsolate. Beatific. With wild beasts and attended by angels. "Never before in my life," writes the author, "has just being here - with the fox and the doe and the owl, with my pulse and my fears and the frozen air hot in my throat - felt like so much."
April 8, 2020
There is very little I can say about this genre-defying book that would accurately capture just how stunning, how innovative, how tender and how revelatory it is. Its a powerful ode to looking, the "solidarity of recognition" as Sharlet writes. The book is comprised of a series of images and text, some of which are tied to a journalistic narrative arc, others are simply assortments of photos and texts; vignettes. The book opens and closes with meditations from Sharlet on the circumstances that led him to write this book, and on the act of looking. I turned its last page feeling deeply touched and grateful to have been able to read it.
March 15, 2020
If one of literature's primary powers is to jettison us from our myopic lives and into the dark, liminal headspace of others, then Sharlet's latest photojournalist collection shines a heavenly light on this brilliant darkness. Maybe my desire to apply hyperbolic praise on Jeff is due to the fortunate fact that this book and reader merged at an optimal moment in time. Regardless, I present Exhibit A on why creative nonfiction--when done correctly--kicks the mighty ass out of your favorite fiction practitioner.
March 22, 2020
This Brilliant Darkness is an empathetic and beautifully human work of journalism. After having a heart attack in his forties, Jeff Sharlet starts taking photos and posting them on Instagram of people he meets. There's the night shift workers, the LGBTQ+ population in Russia, an inspiring actor killed by police on Skid Row, and Mary, who goes nowhere without her beloved plant Bandit, among others. If you need a book that will make you feel more connected to humanity at large, this is an excellent choice. It was exactly the book I needed to read at this time.
March 31, 2020
After I was notified to work from home, the library was notified to close. Fortunately, the book got renewed automatically for another month. So I read it slowly cause it is not easy to digest the words and the pictures in the book. The prospective is very unique and thought-provoking, thus sometimes it is also a little difficult to digest comfortably. I like the last chapter the best, especially the paragraph he described about his heart attack and his interpretation of cold. The pictures visualize the words, and the words sometimes are more vivid than pictures. Great read.
May 12, 2020
I read an excerpt of this book in Harper's magazine, which intrigued me. That article was an excerpt from the section where Jeff talks about people he meets working the night shift, along with their photos. All of the character studies in this book are so memorable: the night shift workers, the woman with a plant for a friend, the homeless immigrant in LA. The author also talks about their family history and personal things, making this book a combination of memoir and journalism. I found the author's memoir sections weaker than the journalism sections, but I highly recommend it.
September 20, 2020
Photographs accompanying Jeff's finely honed, insightful writing. The book is bookended by a connection between his father's heart attack and his own. The thread being his drives from his home to visit his father. In between are Jeff's magazine pieces and photos. The writing is long form and uniformly excellent. I'd read one of the pieces before, the others new to me. Jeff"s writing makes each story seem intensely personal and I intend that as a compliment. Whether he's documenting a police shooting on skid row or the plight being gay in Russia, you are immersed. Highly recommended.
October 30, 2020
There is a certain type of book I love most: one that tells the story of ordinary people as if it were a novel. This is one of those stories, but even better, this one has photos.
I loved many aspects of this story. I felt deeply sad reading about the lives of people who were struggling, who could have had a different life if only. All that was slightly, and only slightly, spoiled, by the author's pretension. There were some parts that I had to keep from rolling my eyes-- it seemed like he was trying so hard for depth, profundity.
I loved many aspects of this story. I felt deeply sad reading about the lives of people who were struggling, who could have had a different life if only. All that was slightly, and only slightly, spoiled, by the author's pretension. There were some parts that I had to keep from rolling my eyes-- it seemed like he was trying so hard for depth, profundity.
January 16, 2021
This is a BEAUTIFUL thing, as it’s not just a ‘story’, but a collection of excellent photographs that are so captivating, and act as the catalyst for the accompanying text. It’s both uplifting and incredibly sad, stories of ordinary Americans who’s lives just became too complex to manage, told with such tenderness and compassion. Jeff Sharlet just grabbed the third rail, the sparks flew, and his courage has lit a corner of our world that society conspires to keep in the shadows. His love tears at your heart, read it.
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