For over forty years, Jeffrey Silverthorne has situated the essential part of his work in a conversation between artist and model, whether in an interior, in the studio or in a room, in an abstract space or in a public place. Different photographic practices lead to this in camera dialogue. The photographer may stage his model or work with actors, make montages with vernacular photos, or treat more documentary subjects by choosing settings that evoke classic poses of art history. In his photography, the image is posed, composed, played: performed. The eroticized nude dominates his work, and he also appears in his latest work . His art can be both detached and formidably direct.
His famous series Morgue Work (1972-1991) is a concentration of this aesthetic where daily life and the universal coming together. By treating the bodies like funerary sculptures, indicating the cause of death, the artist transforms the victims of ordinary events into modern recumbent effigies. In the series Letters from the Dead House (1986-1991), where Silverthorne inserts photographs into those of the corpses, he approaches the idea of the funerary rite.
Going as far as the dead or aging body, the dark side of desire and sometimes even the grotesque, Jeffrey Silverthorne seems to be constantly seeking the power of the creative gesture. His images do not show classic or documentary ‘subjects’, they are studies. This is where the meaning of this very homogeneous œuvre is hidden: Jeffrey Silverthorne shows how the artist works, his mechanisms and his motivations. What matters here is not essentializing the photographer’s work, but understanding how – through a photographic approach that resembles the tableau vivant – he is able to engage the history of art and photography in a conversation around the theme of desire. […]
Michel Poivert
Michel Poivert is a French photography historian and curator, teacher at University Paris I.
Jeffrey Silverthorne, Studio Work
Pascaline Mulliez Gallery
November 3rd to January 7, 2017
42 Rue de Montmorency
75003 Paris
France
