The photographer creating a Pantone colour chart for the human race
- Text by Alex King
- Photography by Angélica Dass
When Brazilian artist and photographer Angélica Dass became pregnant with her first child, she was presented with a mystery. Angélica is brown-skinned, with mixed ancestry. Her Spanish husband has “the colour of a lobster when he gets sunburnt.” So what colour would her child be?
Angélica grew up in a technicolour family, with relatives black, white and everything in-between – or coffee, caramel, porcelain, vanilla, hazel and honey, as she describes them. Her own dark skin never caused problems – until she stepped outside the family home, where it provoked prejudice and prohibitions, from being mistaken for the maid to being directed to the service lift in rich friends’ apartment blocks.
The imminent birth of her child got Angélica thinking deeply once again about our complex and confusing ideas about colour and race: a train of thought that led her to embark on the Humanæ Project. In the hope of revealing our true colours, she set herself the ambitious task of cataloguing every human skin tone she could find against the Pantone colour palette.
Much-loved by artists and designers, Pantones have become a technical-industrial standard system of colour classification. Each unique colour is represented by an alphanumeric code, which allows them to be accurately recreated in any medium.
So far, the project has amassed 3000 images, taken in 22 cities and 14 different countries on five continents. Refugees who crossed the Mediterranean on rickety boats sit alongside Forbes Rich List billionaires, with Swiss students sitting alongside schoolchildren from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
With each of her Humanæ portraits, Angélica shoots each subject head-on against a white background, which she then tints in post with a colour tone identical to a sample of 11 x 11 pixels taken from her volunteers’ photographed faces. Presenting her subjects all in the same format, topless against a plain background made from just their skin colour, strips them from the artificial, socio-political construct that is race.
Find out more about the Humanæ Project.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like
The heady bliss of Glastonbury Festival after the music
Not Done Yet — While the weekend’s headliners and stacked line-ups usually draws the majority of the attention, much of its magic occurs after the music stops. Mischa Haller’s new photobook captures the euphoria and endless possibilities of Glasto’s “in between” moments.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Confronting America’s history of violence against student protest
Through A Mirror, Darkly — In May 1970, two separate massacres at American college campuses saw deaths at the hands of the state. Naeem Mohaiemen’s new three-channel film memorialises the brutality.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The cathartic roar of Vietnam’s hardcore punk scene
Going hardcore in Saigon — In a country that has gradually opened up in recent decades, a burgeoning youth movement is creating an outlet for youth frustration and anxiety. Frank L’Opez reports from the country’s biggest city’s underground.
Written by: Frank L’Opez
Defiant photos of New York’s ’80s & ’90s queer activists
Arresting Images — Dona Ann McAdams’ photographs document the AIDS crisis, lesbian organising and civil disobedience from one of the most fraught eras in American LGBTQ+ history. A sale of her archive takes place later this month.
Written by: Sydney Lobe
Joe Bloom’s View From a Bridge
More stories, more human — The artist and creator of the vertical video generation’s most loved storytelling platform explains the process behind creating the show, and the importance of bucking trends.
Written by: Isaac Muk
When David Wojnarowicz became Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud in New York — In 1978, the American artist and his friends donned masks to pay tribute to the French poet, who was born a century before him. Miss Rosen traces the differing yet parallel lives of the queer revolutionaries.
Written by: Miss Rosen
