With the publication of Sergio Purtell’s first book, Love’s Labor (Stanley/Barker, 2020), I found myself thinking that portraiture has a very uncanny way of reaching people to tap into their emotions and nerves, and all of this is done without knowing the person in the photograph. I have spent much of my mid-years avoiding portraiture in my work and the work of others. It is not that I do not appreciate it; I do. I may find a distance to it because of awkwardness and being relatively isolated from the act of taking pictures of people. It is quite a strange human phenomenon to look at the face of another, across time, across geography, and feel anything about the image. I suspect this has to do with inherent traits in our species. We rely on facial gestures and cues, and much of our communication sometimes goes unspoken, even when that face is frozen. We can read people’s faces, and cuing is a link to how we feel when looking at each other, amongst a range of emotions we feel when observing others.

Certain artists’ work unclogs that feeling of distance to portraiture and gives me space to move around the frames, emote, and challenge my inner demons when it comes to photographic portraiture. Mark Steinmetz is one of these artists. Bryan Schutmaat, Thomas Boivin, Gregory Halpern, Chris Killip, Alisa Resnik, Pieter Hugo, and Dana Lixenberg are among many other greats who strike me in a particular way. Their work resonates with me as it always feels quite partial. There is a technical skill that I cling to, but after that, much of what I find appealing in those artists works is a sense of mood and the general way I feel afterward. Sometimes, it’s cerebral, and other times, I am content to look at nice pictures, which I do not gravitate toward easily as I dwell in complex material most of the time by my design.

Admittedly, there is quite a bit of variation in the work of those artists, but those are just a few names of people whose work challenges my position on portrait-taking. And in this, what I find endlessly fascinating is that I can sense some form of empathy for the people in the frame. I examine them for details, look at clothing and lines in rugged faces, and try to imagine the photographic act, but quickly after that, the act of recognition of the subject. This takes some getting used to as you have to deny the reality that it is just a picture and believe that what is trapped and still in the frame is flesh and bone, with real-world concerns, problems, and hopes. It is someone who feels, has felt, has lost, and has ideal ways of dreaming the world that one cannot infer by their visage, and yet, it seems feasible to form or apprehend a slight surface appraisal. This appraisal is a projection of my psyche, and its reality to the subject within the photograph is only ever imagined, even if sometimes imagined at length.

With Sergio Purtell, the emphasis for me in Love’s Labor has been on a type of Europe that I am familiar with, one that I see through the seasonal eye of summer. Europe in the summer is a fantastic place. The mood is genuine, and capitals from France, Berlin, London, and Rome to Athens are a blast (Athens in August is a bit relentless), providing a feeling of respite, a strange sense that things are ok. I never felt that in America. I always felt guilty away from the grind. Sitting on a bench for me for any time longer than ten minutes is still nerve-wracking. Parks serve as places of relaxation. People find themselves worshipping the sun wherever possible and are unashamed to enjoy the straightforward nature of summertime. Sergio captured this feeling in his previous book. It is a romantic view of Europe, but sometimes, making broad strokes still produces a painting.

With Moral Minority, his new book published this year by Stanley/Barker, the mood is slightly different. The levity of the photographs from the previous volume still shines through in places, but the romance is somewhat more challenged, and the Chilean immigrant is looking at the country to which he fled Pinochet’s regime in the 1970s. It is clear that he has a profound love for the people of America, and underneath that, one begins to see a contemporary conversation beginning to take shape. First, the title Moral Minority may or may not be borrowed from David Schwarz’s book Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism from 2014.

The book, which I have not read, outlines a politically active group of Evangelical Americans in Chicago in 1973 who, intent on bringing conservatism to America with renewed effort, found their attempts thwarted by leftist activists, who rallied against further conservative tendencies in the country. That is a summary borrowed from another, so you’ll have to pardon the inference. I began with using Moral Minority to see where that might lead me. In terms of contemporary discussion, it is easy to see how this subject matter is cut out for the current moment. It may be a term and has nothing to do with Sergio’s book, but the timing is interesting.

Further, within the work are beautiful portraits, and the canvas of Americans that interest Sergio is vast. It is a fabric with a rich weave, mainly when he takes pictures of young people, and yet, under the surface, there is a tension between images of authority and their counterparts. There are racial tensions hinted at by the way the book is sequenced, often with pictures of black Americans juxtaposed on the opposite page with their white counterpart. There is tension, but there is no outright strife, which suggests some of Purtell’s gentle nature and his longing for making pictures of substance and with humanity brought to the surface. It is a fantastic book that implies a rich subtext. I am reminded of George Georgiou’s American’s Parade and a more humane version of Robert Frank, if not by picture, by discussion implied. Maybe Roy De Carava is closer. You will not find the same mood in Sergio’s photographs but a sympathy of exchange.

I remain a massive fan of Purtell. This volume, filled with more images than his previous book, gives a broader insight into his work. Some of his finest pictures can be found in this volume. Where Love’s Labor gave us the haze of summer days, Moral Minority asks us to see things less benignly through the lens of America, its people, and politics—highly Recommended.