New Age-Friendly Photo Bank dispels stereotypes while helping organizations communicate

Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh has been on a mission to change misconceptions of what aging looks like since its beginnings. Now its Photo Bank gives the nonprofit an opportunity to flip the script on how media depict older people and help nonprofit organizations at the same time.

This month it launched and offers regional community-facing organizations free professional photographs of older adults living their best lives, according to Associate Director Cassandra Masters. Five well-known photographers spread out over the three communities that the nonprofit organization is working with this year — McKeesport, Sharpsburg and Beechview — and beyond to capture intergenerational moments. The organizations now can use those initial 100 photographs for noncommercial, nonpolitical use on flyers, presentations, reports, brochures, websites and other communication needs.

The photographers behind the Photo Bank are Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and leader of the McKeesport Community Newsroom Martha Rial, nationally recognized photojournalist Nate Smallwood, Larry Rippel, Ishara Henry and John Altdorfer, according to an Age-Friendly news release. They represent all ages themselves and the diversity of our region; introductory material and links to complete bios are on the site.

The Photo Bank showcases a variety of activities and events with intergenerational moments, including a McKeesport family meal, a Downtown workday, a Greensburg arts festival and everything in between. “These everyday snapshots deserve to be uplifted not just as sentimental, feel-good experiences but as essential ingredients to a thriving region,” Masters, who is also age inclusion campaign manager, said in the release. “We have one of the greatest concentrations of older adults in the United States. There is so much potential in that — if we choose to come together across generations.” 

The Photo Bank is part of a regional Age Inclusion Campaign, made possible by Henry L. Hillman Foundation support, according to the release. The campaign aims to uplift the potential of intergenerational connection and debunk myths and stereotypes about aging.

That is what Age-Friendly has been doing since it began in 2015 as an initiative of Southwestern Pennsylvania Partnership for Aging and University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. In addition to Hillman, it has received grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation, Jefferson Regional Foundation and Heinz Family Foundation.

Masters said the organization has been thinking about the Photo Bank for years, inspired by age inclusion champions such as the Centre for Ageing Better in the United Kingdom and partners in Columbus, Ohio, and Boston. “What we think about growing older is actually different than what is in the media,” she said.

The campaign has several components, first influencing workplaces and universities, places where people can impact change around aging. Age-Friendly Scholars has students learning about aging and older workers in their chosen fields such as engineering and social work. Two cohorts from seven universities have completed that program, Masters said. Second, it piloted an Age Inclusive Workplaces workshop series last fall because the organization knows many people need and want to continue working. During those seven sessions Age-Friendly tested aging messaging. Three or four more will be scheduled this spring, and the effort will become a permanent part of Age-Friendly.

The Photo Bank illustrates all that work, Masters said, and it reinforces the nonprofit’s commitment to building thriving communities for older adults. In the news release, Executive Director Laura Poskin said, “These images highlight what we know to be true: We want to connect. We want to know our neighbors. We are stronger when we choose community. At a time of division and uncertainty, these photos show that we — as a region — choose community. We choose love.”

The 100 photos — selected from 500 submitted by the photographers and some archival images — depict urban and nonurban areas and diverse identities with a wide range of people of color, a good mix of men and women, and some nonbinary people. They also captured people with mobility aids and devices, such as walkers, Masters said, to show that reality.

In total the photographs captured 230 individuals in about 15 locations throughout four counties.

One thing Masters and the photographers pushed against is how stock photos portray older people. “We know in the aging world, stock photos are kind of dire,” Masters said. “They are either overly happy or overly sad. [They’re] alone, no interaction shots and not intergenerational, or those that are show a caretaker relationship. They are usually indoors.”

In the Photo Bank planning, she said Age-Friendly consulted partners such as Bike Pittsburgh and the Mon Valley Initiative. The overall response: “Why don’t we have better photos of people who are living their best lives?”

Now, Age-Friendly believes, they do.

Rial said in the news release, “Pittsburghers are proud of their ability to build strong communities by celebrating what unites us. I hope my images tell that story.”

Masters said she was familiar with Smallwood, Altdorfer and Rippel and their work. Rial suggested that Henry apply for the assignment after meeting her through several McKees Rocks and Sto-Rox High School projects and workshops.

Henry came to Western Pennsylvania in 2021 at the invitation of Ezsquire Harris, founder and CEO of BlackTeaBrownSuga Network, a media production network and community organization in McKees Rocks, according to a 2023 Pittsburgh City Paper article.

Born in Detroit and raised in Bellaire, Ohio, Henry is self-taught. A teacher who advised her high school’s yearbook sparked her photography interest and once on staff, she had access to cameras as well as a “safe place for me.” Henry taught herself Photoshop and took senior portraits for special-needs students unable to afford studio photography.

While working and raising two children as a single mom, she didn’t have the time or money to pursue formal photography education. It also precluded a creative-based career as she supported herself and her family.

The need for a new career intensified after she lost her mother, sister and grandmother. By 2019 Henry, living now in Dayton, found herself wanting that creative career, and she purchased her first DSLR camera. Her children and close childhood friends posed for her as she built her portfolio.

She didn’t, though, find much support for a photography career in Ohio, and the invitation to come to McKees Rocks arrived at the right time. She is now BlackTeaBrownSuga’s media manager and owns Visuals by Ishara Ltd. Henry explains on her website that by “using my photography and videography practices, I strive to challenge prevailing narratives, spotlighting overlooked issues within Black communities. I create as a means of expression but also as a means of connection.”

She loved the PhotoBank opportunity. “A large part of my practice is based on increasing representation. This has been an opportunity to do that work that I haven’t been able to — age generational … to build out and increase representation, especially around Black and brown communities. We are not represented positively when it comes to media often. I make it my mission to increase those positive images, regardless of what they are centered on. For me it seemed like a great opportunity to do all these types.”

The project introduced her to McKeesport, a community Henry had not visited. PGH Print Ship, a Sharpsburg business that she calls a “hidden gem,” handles her printing work, so that community was familiar to her when she photographed a First Night event there.

Henry’s McKeesport assignment was that family dinner. She said she had never photographed such an intimate event. Every Sunday Tammy’s children and grandchildren and others come to enjoy her cooking, which she handles all by herself. But it’s more than that.  

“It was really beautiful to see,” Henry said. “It was a pretty large family, but it wasn’t just her family. It was open to friends and [other] family and neighbors. You can tell there was lot of love in the room.”

Her hope is that her photography and the others’ reflect reality. Henry said stock photos are “unauthentic.”

The people she knows — such as McKees Rocks Mayor David Flick and his wife, MarySue — don’t fit aging stereotypes. His wife is a painter who created two murals in the borough last year, and Flick works on stage productions, building sets and tearing them down.

Part two in this portion of Age Friendly’s Age Inclusion campaign includes neighborhood exhibits and activations later this year centered on the photographs. And Masters hopes Age-Friendly will be able to include photographers and more photographs as it continues the campaign.