“If you’re Black, stand back;

If you’re Brown, stick around;

If you’re Yellow, you are mellow,

If you’re White, you’re alright”

American Nursery Rhyme, author unknown [1]

As nursery rhymes are generally created for children to recite as a way of learning, the first reaction to the above rhyme from the US, which is still in existence today, is one of shock. What the rhyme symbolises is the common perception of racial division around the world which describes a simple colour categorisation into which everyone is placed. This simple idea became the root of ‘colourism’, whose origins date back to the days of colonialism and slavery. Black people were considered the underclass, had little in terms of education, were treated inhumanely and enslaved. The people that fitted into the Brown and Yellow categories were treated better respectively, with the White people being the originators of the scheme and as a result, the superior race. Despite the progress over the past 200 years, colourism still exists at a subconscious level in the way that some people view others of different ethnicity. A modern example was the casting of the film Straight Outta Compton (2015) which told the story of the up and coming rap scene in 1980s Los Angeles. The casting team categorised women who were potential extras in the film by grading their skin tone, which drew widespread criticism when it became public[2]. This identification and classification of non-white people exacerbates the tensions around racial equality and civil rights, which today is perhaps most widely epitomised in the media coverage of atrocities such as the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

With her work Humanae, Angelica Dass wanted to show how much variety there was in skin colour across the world. Born into what she describes as a ‘colourful Brazilian family'[1], Dass affectionately refers to the chocolate, cinnamon and bronze tones of the members of her family. Growing up, Dass only really encountered colourism outside of her native Brazil.

Humanae is an unfinished work comprising of many thousands of portraits, all shot in the same way as Dass travelled the world. Her volunteer subjects are shot as head and shoulders only against a plain background, with the photographs cropped as squares. Dass then worked in post production to take a sample of the skin colour from a small region of the subject’s nose to gain their tone. She then used the international Pantone colour grading system[3] to change the background to match the subject’s tone, including the reference code as part of the image. A couple of examples can be seen below.

Here we have two images of very different skin tone. What’s immediately obvious is that neither conform to the conventional Black, Brown, Yellow, White ideas of colourism. By altering the background colour, Dass draws our attention to the subtlety of the skin tones from shot to shot. The inclusion of the Pantone code gives us another anchor of difference but also a sense of the scientific. She is almost suggesting that the classification of colour has been done by a professional body, and that the classification is far from simple when attributing it to how people look. Dass has many thousands of pictures in her collection now and has been experimenting with how to present it to the world. By her own admission, the traditional presentation in a gallery isn’t really something she feels she fits within, allowing the viewers to choose to engage with the work or not. As a woman of colour, Dass connects more with confronting the audience with her work, so one exhibition was as billboards in the streets of major cities. This way, the audience is presented with the photographs as a matter of daily life. The effect of pushing the narrative of the complex differences in our appearances is more powerful when it cannot easy be ignored.

Conclusion

I found out about this work on social media a couple of weeks ago. With the completion of the exercises in Part 2, I was drawn to the use of subject and background as effectively a reinforcement of one another. The large expanse of the same colour as the skin tone makes makes me really notice how subtle the differences are between cultures, but also people within the same.. I really connected with the use of textual context in the shots too, the Pantone codes joining the series together as well as reinforcing the narrative. I can see other opportunities for the application of backgrounds this ways, for example contrasting perspectives on gender and age, social standing and materialism, sexuality, values and principles. It’s something I will explore elsewhere in this unit.

References

[1] Unfinished Community, 2020, “Angélica Dass’ Humanae Project”, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ro85RwLiE

[2] Bagalini A, 2020, “Colourism: How skin-tone bias affects racial equality at work”, Weforum Post, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/racial-equality-skin-tone-bias-colourism/

[3] Unknown, 2021, “What are Pantone Colour Systems”, Pantone.com website, https://www.pantone.com/uk/en/colour-systems/pantone-colour-systems-explained

[4] Dass, A, 2012, “Humane”, Image Resource, Artist Website, https://angelicadass.com/photography/humanae/