Interview with Paul D'Amato, commended artist at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2013 for his work "Lillian, New Covenant Church of Deliverance, Chicago, 2011."

More on the Portrait Competition at http://portraitcompetition.si.edu

Paul D'Amato writes:

"I have no clever strategy for making these pictures, and I have no simple answers for what they mean. I'm a white photographer taking pictures in the west side of Chicago, a neighborhood that is African American and poor. I'm not supposed to be there. That's part of the attraction; difference is inherently attractive and part of what got me started."

"When I'm there, however, when I'm visiting a family I know, or when I'm at the Original Providence Baptist Church, as I often am, or whether I'm simply stopping someone I've never met—I'd like to think that something more important, less superficial occurs. It varies from picture to picture. Maybe it's about a kind of grace or beauty; maybe it's about the pleasure of attention, or the desire to do something out of the ordinary like collaborating on a photograph."