His clients include Robert Adams, An-My Lê, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mark Steinmetz, Deana Lawson, Jim Goldberg, Larry Clark, Jim Goldberg, and Wendy Ewald. His many institutional and editorial clients include Aperture, Museum of Modern Art, Gagosian Gallery, Artforum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yancey Richardson Gallery, Artnews, United Technologies, Yale University Art Gallery, Museum Folkwang, Art Gallery of Ontario, and The New York Times.

Sergio studied with Paul Krot at RISD and Richard Benson at Yale. He has been printing for himself and for other photographers since 1980 — his first official printing job was for the Walker Evans estate. Black and White on White began in the mid-1980s in a tiny loft space on White Street in Lower Manhattan, where owner Sergio Purtell first set up shop after earning his MFA in Photography from Yale University. As the photographic medium has continued to evolve, so has our business. Our dedicated team of professionals, all photographers themselves, are knowledgeable in historical as well as contemporary trends, practices and techniques. .

Sergio is not only a printmaker, but a renowned artist in his own right. Sergio’s photographic prints are held in the collections of Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington (Seattle), University of Colorado (Boulder), Museum of Fine Arts (Santiago, Chile), Museum of Contemporary Art (Panama), Fotografie Forum (Frankfurt, Germany), Das Akfoto (Munich, Germany), and Stichting Foto, (Amsterdam). He also recently published a monograph, Love's Labour with Stanley Barker Books.