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.