A bold and unique project is being done by photographer Angelica Dass, she takes portraits of volunteers from Brazil to Paris to show that we need to take a new look at race. Skin doesn’t come in black, white or brown. It has many colors and gradient of tones ranging from dark to light.
Her project is called Humanae and it’s an ongoing project that is no way near the end. On her Tumblr blog she writes about it as a ” work in progress “. More info: Humanae
Angelica tries and get volunteers of all skin colors
The idea is to photograph the people with as little makeup and style as possible to highlight their natural skin color and tone
After she gets enough photos of people, she creates 11×11 pixel color samples of the photos
She than matches the the images against the Pantone color library, trying to find the exact labels for the shades
Dass adds each photo with the number of the hue. giving you the opportunity to see how the person and color behind him or her match perfectly
Last part is to place the portrait on the background after being dyed with the right color
Than she moves on to the next subject and so on…like we said, it’s a working project
Angelica called this project “a chromatic inventory.”
It gives the viewers an opportunity to see the gradients in race and color and not just label people as black or white or brown
Every time she displayed her work in public, the collection of colors and people is a little bit more nuance
Dass plans on continuing this project until she can capture every skin tone possible
The project includes all of us, regardless of our color or skin spectrum
Thanks to Das’s work, artists and people around the world can look at skin color in a new way
This work is like a global palette
We love it and think it’s an eye opener
