SilberMark

About the Artist

An accomplished photographer and cultural anthropologist, Mark Silber has had local and national recognition as an author of several documentary books. In 1972, his first work published by Godine Publishers, Boston, showed "Rural Maine" as it was - challenged by poverty and yet, starkly beautiful with its people and landscape. His 1973 publication "Family Album" (with introduction by Weston Naef of Metropolitan Museum) established him also as a historian of lore and visual anthropology, compiling a work by local photographers at the turn of the 20th century and interviewing their descendants.
In 1975, his book about stock car racers, "Racing Stock", focused on a spectrum of individuals who were passionate about the number one spectator sport in the United States. It was a work of oral history and documentary photography and entailed interviews with small-time stock car racers, fans, widows of racers, promoters, as well as with nationally-known stars of the racing circuit.
"Thoreau Country", a book of photographs by H.W. Gleason and quotations by Henry David Thoreau (for Sierra Club), was an acclaimed award winning volume of photographs from the turn of the 20th century which he printed from original glass plates.
Several other books on gardening and horticulture followed in the 1980's.
Local oral history and documentary award winning books - "Sumner 200: Portrait of a Small Maine Town" (interviews and photographs) as well as "Rumford Stories" (with his documentary photographs) were reviewed and exhibited throughout Maine. Mark Silber, Ph.D. teaches and lectures on oral history and documentary photography, is a consultant to community organizations on preserving their own visual documents and produces books and visual material for individuals as well as institutions.