“His photography is intense, shocking, and often transcendent. There is a mythic, romantic aspect in the work that is sobering, even beautiful in a conservative way, positioning the work beside classic portraiture and fantasy. History lives in the work.”
On the Art of Jeffrey Silverthorne
by Cary Loren, Book Beat: The Back Room, 2022
“There are very few voices that can convey the stark realities of our existence. Jeffrey was a true giant in getting to the point and a gentleman in sharing his experiences.”
Jeffrey Silverthorne 1946-2022
by Brad Feuerhelm, American Suburb X , 2022
“Silverthorne’s photographs from the morgue allow the dead a good deal of dignity, even in this coldly forensic setting. The dead bodies of babies, so recently inhabited, now empty of life, are lovingly treated, and a “Boy Found in Bushes” appears to sleep peacefully, despite the dried blood covering the lower half of his face. The boundary between life and death is blurred in these photographs, because that’s what photographs do: they present the surface of things in a way that triggers memories of wholeness, movement and life.”
Photographing the Dead
by David Levi Strauss, Time Magazine, 2017
“Whether photographing the trans community, sex workers on the Mexico border, bullrings, carnivals, or Boystown, Silverthorne brought empathy to his encounters with people living on the margins of society.”
A glimpse inside America’s trans community in the ’70s
by Miss Rosen, Huck Magazine , 2022
“We come away from Silverthorne’s work with a heightened perception on many levels, feeling the weight of human existence, the jokes that genes, luck and circumstance play on all of us.”
I Saw It
by Annie Proulx, Directions for Leaving, 2007
“In a haunting, challenging way, Silverthorne's pictures confront what it means to be alive, to be beautiful, to be sexual, to be doomed.”
A Second’s Eternity
Metro Times, Detroit, MI, 1993