related

My project “related” is a series of portraits of people from very different cultural backgrounds. A person’s ‘roots’ are usually shaped initially by their family, their homeland, and their cultural background. In addition, each person develops their own unique inner roots through their personal life journey.

Our own “roots” usually provide stability, orientation, and a sense of belonging. They connect us through a shared culture, a common language, shared topics, or even a shared value system. 

However, as much as “roots” can connect us, they also always have a divisive side. People often find it difficult to understand “others” with, for example, a culture that is foreign to them, and the more foreign their counterpart or their way of thinking appears, the greater the distance becomes. Misunderstandings and conflicts are often a consequence of this divisive aspect of different “roots.” 

But we are all human beings and have similar basic needs, regardless of our ancestry.

After all, we all originate from the nature of this earth and most likely have a common ancestry, so to speak, we have common roots.

A study by the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford was published in the journal Science in 2022, and this study created the most comprehensive family tree of humanity. The result supports the thesis:

“We humans are all one family, regardless of where we come from. All people in the world are related to each other!” 

Our genetic makeup not only determines our individual characteristics, but also tells the story of our ancestry and origins. The study collected more than 3,500 individual genome sequences from 215 populations of modern and up to 100,000-year-old DNA samples from all parts of the world and evaluated them using AI. The mapping shows the relationships between populations living today and allows conclusions to be drawn about common ancestors. 

I really like this idea that we are all somehow related to each other. Perhaps it also promotes more openness and respect towards every human being, no matter how individual and different they may be, because we all have something that connects us: the shared ancestry of the human family.