SILVERTHORNE, Jeffrey - Morgue

Personal statement by photographer, Jeffrey SILVERTHORNE.

"I can die in an instant, a crossing of boundaries. Death resolves and terminates, time is measured and marked. For the survivor, personal considerations are exploded and any emotion is possible, while public regulations constrict and sentimentalize this unique and ordinary change. My parents died when I was young and for the most part I went to the Morgue looking for them. I found them, many years later, in my heart." (Jeffrey SILVERTHORNE)

Background information, content

"In 1972, Jeffrey SILVERTHORNE was twenty-five years old and married four years, his second child just born, and the Vietnam War was still producing death. Change and death were in the air, and the Morgue was the place where the American photographer could find physical evidence of this feeling. After he presented his documentary project to the Attorney General, he surprisingly agreed. The state mortuary, the Morgue, is where a body is sent when there are unknown or violent circumstances surrounding the death.
Over time, the project evolved from pure documentary into a portrait of dreams and failures, into remnants of realities, treated at once with complete respect and complete disregard by Jeffrey SILVERTHORNE." (free translation of publisher's text, © Stanley/Barker, 2017)

Additional information

In addition to the regular edition of 'The Morgue' offered here, a Special Ed. limited to fifteen copies including a signed silver print is also available for € 298,00 while supplies last!

About US photographer, Jeffrey SILVERTHORNE (1946-2022)

Photo books by and about Jeffrey SILVERTHORNE