Analí Cine, Melanie Manuel, Diane Lee, ASA 115, Week 2 photography project

With this project, we wanted to make a statement about colorism. Since we were limited with time and resources, we thought that taking self-portraits to show our level of privilege based on our skin color would be a good way to convey colorism. Colorism is a prevalent issue in communities that have had issues of colonialism. As a result, this has created a sense of internalized racism within these communities, where these members demean themselves and think less of themselves. Of course, this brings to question how mixed-race folks may feel in these situations if those in these communities are already heavily affected on their own. This means to say that the internalized racism for mixed race folks transcends those of monoracial folks. That isn’t to ignore or overlook monoracial folks, but this does bring to the spotlight a prevailing issue that we still see in the twenty-first century--colorism. Lighter skin is still privileged over dark skin, and while many decades ago, this was a means of upward mobility and a sign of resistance (think of those that had participated  in the act of passing), this has created a sense of self-hatred and arguably an ideology in which  lighter-skinned folks are better off than those of darker-skinned folks. This piece is meant to comment on a concept that the class discussed on Tuesday about how the color spectrum works for privilege. We do not mean to reify the idea that colorism suggests, but rather we want to start a discussion on why this still prevails, where it comes from, and what a possible future might mean if we no longer view the world in color. Additionally, we wanted to better conceptualize colorism since we had a discussion about it in class.

The piece was created by taking pictures with a mac computer camera. We then used adobe 

Photoshop to write our messages and edit our photos with a drawing tablet and a stylus pen. 

Being an artist, for us, means that we get to convey our messages through art. It means that we can express how we feel or think in a way that is different than just using words. As artists, we are community advocates, we are courageous creators who want to promote awareness and equality. Our core belief in creating art is to start conversations about issues that multiracial folks experience as well as monoracial folks, because we believe it is important to understand where ideologies like colorism, internalized racism, and other such topics we’ve discussed come from. And although we are educating, we also seek to learn as well.