ultra | arts + culture portland

correct me if i am wrong, but is this the first time ultra has shown people of color on its home page?

oh come on. the girls are going to be looking at this and showing their parents and friends and you, whoever you are because you aren’t brave enough to identify yourself, decide to make it about race? it’s not about them being beautiful black girls, it’s about them being BEAUTIFUL GIRLS!!!! they could be purple and it wouldn’t matter! they were incredible to work with and did something that most teenagers would be too scared to do– stand up and be noticed. we should applaud THEM for their confidence, bravery, and beauty instead of making snide remarks about ultra.

filipa, thank you for the lovely comments. i completely agree that there needs to be a forum for this. im just not sure that this posting is the appropriate place to do it…but i suppose we’ve crossed that line already.

i have talked with lisa before about increasing diversity on ultra and this shoot was one of our ideas. the problem with portland is that (unfortunately) we don’t have a high level of diversity. it’s a very white city and there aren’t many people of color involved in the fashion community. the small number who are have been featured on ultra several times–modi of idom; the several black models from portland fashion week; sameunderneath and bishop’s, both owned by minorities; even the entire crew of this photoshoot, myself included, come from asian backgrounds (minus the hairstylists!). minh’s photos are on here all of the time. there may not be a million photos of minorities, but we are certainly involved with this publication in one way or another.

for portland, lisa is doing a pretty good job of representing everyone involved, white or not. as far as the global fashion industry is concerned, white is right. but that’s a different story.

Both sides pose different viewpoints. Neither is right or wrong. However, I see where A is coming from. I have to disagree that Portland is a “white city”. There are large numbers of Latino, black, Asian, etc populations. Those communities have just as many events as we have “in the city.” It is a choice in reporting, in my opinion, whether to extend coverage to those groups or stick to the mainstream, and what is safe.