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Photographer Andrea London, in her Shadyside studio, looks at a miniature version of a mural that will cover a building at Penn and Centre Avenues in late March.
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'We Are All Related' is portrait photographer’s effort to bridge the divide

Diana Nelson Jones

'We Are All Related' is portrait photographer’s effort to bridge the divide

Andrea London had spent 30 years making photographic portraits for a living when, during the 2016 presidential campaign, she became troubled by Donald Trump’s insults of Mexicans, Muslims and the disabled, among others whose demographic groups often are targets of bullying and ridicule.

“I felt like I had to do something,” she said.

The result is the multimedia project “We Are All Related,” a book, gallery exhibit and outdoor mural that celebrate the common core of our humanity, whether we wear sombreros, hijabs, burkas, ball caps, turbans, yarmulkes, feathers, Stetsons or tam-o’-shanters.

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“In my effort to embrace people who are often thought of as ‘other,’ I wanted to make sure not to make Trump supporters the ‘other,’” she said, noting that she didn’t ask people about their political leanings.

Aradhna Oliphant, president and CEO of Leadership Pittsburgh, in 2018.
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She began inviting people from many demographic groups to sit for a portrait. Some of her subjects from years before agreed to have their portraits included. Their consent comes with the condition that no last names are used, and I am honoring that.

The exhibit opens March 22 at 937 Gallery, 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown, and runs through May 12. A public art installation in East Liberty will coincide with the exhibit. That mural will cover 53 windows, wrapping around an unoccupied commercial building at the intersection of Penn and Centre avenues.

Each subject’s story is in English and, if English is the second language, in their first language as well — 17 languages in all. Global Wordsmiths helped with translations.

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Several foundations supported this effort.

“This project has changed my life,” said Ms. London, whose studio is in Shadyside, “I have been invited to a Nepali wedding. One family invited me to go to the March on Washington with them. I met a woman who survived Hurricane Maria at the Muslim Center and now I am invited to her party.”

Regardless of differences that manifest in dress, head wear, language and customs, we all want the same things — the chance to thrive, to be loved and listened to, to live a decent life —  and that has been true throughout history. 

Ms. London said the grandmother of a Bhutanese refugee said the same thing a Sikh man said — “that they want a better life for their grandchildren,” she said. “It’s the same thing all of our immigrant grandparents said.”

Immigrants have been marginalized throughout history, but “it’s obviously bigger than that,” Ms. London said.

One of her photo subjects, Kade, grew up near DuBois, Pa., doing typical boy things — playing football, getting scraped up — and had no use for girl things, even though she was Kaitlin Marie then.

Now a 25-year-old graphic designer, Kade said that being included in “We Are All Related” “and meeting someone like Andrea [have] been life changing for me as an advocate for the LGBT community.”

In 10th grade, when Kaitlin’s mother learned she had come out to her friends, she threatened to disown her, Kade said.

In 2015, at a gay-straight alliance meeting at Clarion University, Kaitlin, who was going by Kade by then, wrote “him” as the pronoun of choice on a name tag. He began receiving hormone therapy in 2017 and had surgery in 2018. By then, he said, “my parents were 100 percent supportive.

“I think she [his mother] kind of understood that, this is my child and if I don’t accept him I am going to lose him. They’re still slipping on pronouns” because they used “she” for 20-plus years, he said. “But this was a journey I was ready to travel on.”

Ms. London, who is Jewish, draws on personal experience of her own in empathy with her subjects. When she was 8, an inseparable friend told her they couldn’t be friends anymore because a Sunday school teacher had said that anyone who does not worship Jesus Christ would burn in hell.

“‘We Are All Related’ is my attempt to counter this rhetoric of separation and racism,” Ms. London said. “I’m not saying we are all the same. I’m looking at the core of who we are as a people and defending our [shared] humanity.”

The 937 Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. ‘We Are All Related’ will be the subject of a panel discussion from 7 to 9 p.m. April 27 at the gallery.

Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. Twitter@dnelsonjones.

First Published: March 12, 2019, 8:18 p.m.

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Photographer Andrea London, in her Shadyside studio, looks at a miniature version of a mural that will cover a building at Penn and Centre Avenues in late March.  (Diana Nelson Jones)
Mother and daughter, Hadeel and Shadia are Palestinian immigrants who sat for Andrea London in 2016 and were included in the exhibit "We Are All Related."  (Andrea London)
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