The subject of each snapshot within This Brilliant Darkness has a story to tell, many of them uncomfortable, even painful. But author and journalist Jeff Sharlet treats each "stranger" with a radical empathy and clarity that can be felt even in the photos that accompany his prose. This, his most innovative work to date, is a bold experiment in finding insight through image, in reflecting on the experiences of others as well as yourself. The work collected here over two years is sharp, poetic and vital art for an age of isolation.
There may be no stronger piece of nonfiction published in 2020, in fact, than "12:07 p.m." This devastating selection recounts the life of Charley Keunang, an unarmed homeless man shot by the LAPD on March 1, 2015. Sharlet writes of Charley's loving family, his acting career, the botched bank robbery that sent him to prison, and the homeless community devastated by his death with a keen sense of compassion. The chapter alone is exemplary of the sheer quality of This Brilliant Darkness. Whether interviewing gay activists in Russia or donut shop workers in New Hampshire, the author has captured the weight of their lives and evoked the spirit of Lorca's duende in doing so.
Throughout This Brilliant Darkness, there is a sense of the truth as impermeable, a quality akin to Joan Didion's work. Yet there is also such identification here, as if the distance between author and subject is the thinnest of layers. --C.M. Crockford, freelance reviewer