The writing in Jeff Sharlet’s gorgeous new book...takes place between lonely traumas.

We often say that a book has changed our lives. But it’s rare to say that a book made us more human. This is a big statement, I know, but This Brilliant Darkness feels as transformative and essential as anything I have read in years. Sharlet’s work is an incantation, a prayer for and summoning of the human powers of observation, empathy, and compassion.

... [a] powerful new work of nonfiction.

Sharlet’s subjects of investigation certainly include things and the people who make them, but those very people are often times the ones giving flesh to the incarnate word through their stories.

This Brilliant Darkness is a project of empathy. We are meant to look at a masseuse who dispenses happy endings in Ireland or a gay hustler in Russia or a shirtless addict on the streets of L.A. and feel we understand them. We are to see them as human. If it all sounds a bit like 'Humans of New York'.

Sharlet is admittedly not primarily or even secondarily a photographer. But he has a good eye, especially in low-light conditions that produce a lyrical murk. These unsettled photos exemplify a paradox: the less precise the edge, the sharper their sense of time.

Through these stories, Sharlet not only looks at their pain, but explores his own, and confronts these stories not by glamorizing the suffering, but humanizing it by breaking through the isolation and getting to know the subjects of his images, erasing the line between journalist and subject.

Sharlet’s most in-depth accounts tell...crushing stories.

Lives lived in shadows and corners are lit up in these offbeat photo-journalistic essays.

Isolated lives shine from dark landscapes.