Chris Cearnal

We Are Portland portrait shoots are noisy events. Babies wriggle and wail at the sudden stillness of posing for a camera, siblings wrestle for the best place on grandmother's lap and stiffly suited toddlers whine for a treat as they wait in line for their turn at eternity.

We Are Portland is a recepient of the highly competitive National Endowment of the Arts Our Town grant, whittling away at the Portlandia inspired vision of Portland, Oregon as a white, shoegazing, hipster town. 

Created by Chris Cearnal and Alex Ney, We Are Portland is rooted in the idea that Portland is best represented by its young people. The vision is carried out through old an fashioned mobile portrait studio (entirely free) and run entirely by neighborhood kids in Portland's lowest income communities. 

Somali refugee children carefully pose Ukrainian Seventh Day Adventist grandmothers and young Eastern European children cheerfully shush Somali babies  while their friends quietly focus the camera, this is the humble power of photography to kindle connection between strangers. 

Trust. 

Before the We Are Portland studio came to Park Vista, a subsidized housing community in Portland Oregon, mothers avoided one another's children in the playground. Rumors floated above the modest concrete patios about what the other families did behind closed doors.  Children were discouraged from playing together. 

Some kind of magic happens when a child invites you to pose for their camera. When they take care of you, brush a hair from the babies' face and pat the two year old on the head. When they smile and tell you you look beautiful. 

We Are Portland was conceived out of the idea that when strangers are invited to sit for a portrait and receive a beautifully wrapped print from someone they may have mistrusted in the past, this builds stronger communities. The subsequent exhibitions mounted  at Portland City Hall and throughout the city give more people the chance to see themselves in a public space and feel welcome.