Portrait of America

This project is a celebration of diversity, tolerance, and acceptance. You might be thinking, what tolerance and acceptance? Isn’t this idiot paying attention to the world around him? Racism, sexism, hate crimes, religious wars, and genocide are prominent in the news. Politicians stoke divisions to gain and consolidate power. But get past the politicians and the news headlines, and there has been substantial movement towards tolerance and acceptance during my lifetime. Fifty years ago, I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. Everyone was the same; everyone was white, straight, and protestant. Others weren’t welcome. That’s changed, even there. Today I live in a San Francisco neighborhood composed of a great diversity of people: black, white, Latino, and Asian; straight and gay; tattooed and pierced. All jumbled together in the new normal. Living and working together, side-by-side. Is there still more work to be done? Certainly. But the progress has been phenomenal. This project celebrates that progress and encourages it to continue. This project includes many images of people of different ethnicity, color, gender, fitness, size, shape, lifestyle, and age. A single image is a frank portrait of a person. The collection is a Portrait of America.