It's gonna be a year worth waiting for.
For their 125th anniversary issue National Geographic commissioned portrait photographer Martin Schoeller to capture the faces of people who epitomized what the average American would look like in the year 2050. The result is a beautiful array of colors, hair textures and features. "What is it about the faces on these pages that we find so intriguing?" journalist Linde Funderberg writes, "Is it simply that their features disrupt our expectations, that we’re not used to seeing those eyes with that hair, that nose above those lips?" From Blackanese to Filatino to Korgentinian, as time progresses there is a growing trend of the blurring of cultural and ethnic lines in the United States.
Below are some photos from the series.
As Zak Cheney-Rice notes at Policy Mic, "The U.S. Census Bureau let respondents check more than one race for the first time in 2000, and 6.8 million people did so. By 2010, that figure had increased to nearly 9 million, a spike of about 32%." He explains that this is encouraging, "but there are obvious flaws with tracking racial population growth through a survey that lets people self-identify, especially since so many familial, cultural, and even geographical factors influence your decision to claim one or multiple races."
Perhaps the growing shift of younger people to come to accept cross-cultural relationships will only widen with time. And if National Geographic's projections are as accurate as they seem, we have a very, very sexy future ahead of us.
[h/t PolicyMic ]
Images via National Geographic.
