If you walk down any street, swing by any cafe, or attend any school in Long Beach you’re sure to find an array of unique cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds behind every person that you meet. Adam McCann did a study of the largest 500 cities in our nation and ranked the city of Long Beach ninth overall for diversity. That’s only two rankings behind Los Angeles.

Photo by Abbey Casarez

Long Beach is a safe haven for all people to coexist with one another. Local Long Beach resident and Millikan High School Senior, Abbey Casarez, wanted to explore this subject through an artistic route, photography. Instead of displaying the variety of people in Long Beach through demographics, charts, and graphs, she presents them through beautiful portraits. Abbey has always been aware of the diversity in this city. As a Long Beach native, she has been surrounded by an assorted group of people her whole life. This being said, it was not hard for Abbey to find everyone she needed to create a complete narrative of the many cultures of Long Beach.

As all of us should, Abbey believes that diversity is important to any given city. She is extremely grateful to have grown up in a city like Long Beach where a wide range of cultures are present. Abbey attests that diversity matters because it makes us more empathetic to other people’s struggles. She also notes that it is easier to be more accepting to the people around us when we have exposure to them in daily life.

Abbey Casarez, Long Beach resident and photographer

The collection of photographs, entitled “Portrait of Long Beach”, will be displayed in at the Alpert Jewish Community Center on March 16, 2019 from 1 PM to 3:30 PM. Everyone who is featured in the gallery will be attending as well. They will be sharing artifacts, clothes, food, and information of their culture at the exhibit. The cultures that will be represented in Abbey’s “Portrait of Long Beach” exhibit are Polish, Filipino, Cuban, Egyptian, Ghanaian, Irish, Native American, Cambodian, Mexican, Japanese, Swedish, South Asian, and Nigerian.

Photo by Abbey Casarez

Photo by Abbey Casarez

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