MORE THAN A decade ago, photographer John Noltner began crisscrossing the United States to conduct interviews focused on this question: What does peace mean to you? The result was a multiyear, multimedia arts project called “A Peace of My Mind.”
Four exhibits, three books, and tens of thousands of miles later, the pursuit of peace has only become more important as the country trembles on ominous fault lines: Noltner put together his most recent book of interviews and photographs, Portraits of Peace: Searching for Hope in a Divided America, several months after the 2017 Charlottesville neo-Nazi riot, made final edits amid the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and fallout from the murder of George Floyd, and sent the book to the publisher just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
Portraits of Peace weaves together unique narratives while identifying ways readers can begin dismantling biases that lead to division. As Noltner writes in a benediction of sorts, “May these stories be a beacon and a compass to guide our journey” toward “encountering difference, navigating conflict, and finding a better path forward.”
The range of voices in Portraits of Peace speaks volumes. Noltner’s interviewees include Black men impacted by the criminal legal system, gay and lesbian couples, two married survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, undocumented immigrants, and more. Interviewees’ voices and personal peacebuilding commitments are amplified, even as their stories lay bare how loss, disability, poverty, crime, race, gender, sexuality, and religion impact their lives differently—and how acknowledging these differences might also be a step toward common ground.
Portraits of Peace focuses on individual actions rather than the systems that shape people’s lives. While building relationships can be part of healing divisions, there are structures in America that will never function equitably only through love between neighbors. Pursuing justice requires much more.
While sharing our stories will not in itself right the ever-increasing wrongs in America, Noltner’s book invites readers to make room for grace rooted in accountability, listening, and action. Portraits of Peace is a first step, not a destination, but it could propel readers to do the next hard thing.
Noltner acknowledges that his work flows from a “poster child” for privilege—he self-identifies as a “white, middle-aged guy from the suburbs, college educated, heterosexual, cisgender, married, with 2.0 kids and a dog.” While the book reflects an artful curation of stories that honors their weight, he also acknowledges perspectives he overlooked in the past and includes times when his privilege or implicit bias resulted in broken relationships or when questions he thought would lead to common ground instead demonstrated how much he has yet to learn.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts of the book: In moments where grace is neither warranted nor expected, owning our own stories—our intentions, our actions, and our impacts—is the only way forward. As Noltner writes, “the question I have to ask myself is, ‘When things get difficult, will you stay at the table?’”
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