Designer Week # 2

The reason why I’m doing this…

This project stemmed from an idea that I had, involving me and my own identity.  I wanted to do a series of self-portraits.  The first series of pictures where going to be taken with my natural hair and the second series of pictures with straight hair.  Then I wanted to make a diptic of the two and present the question witch do you prefer?  So from there the Idea for this project was developed.

In the black community we consist of many different colors an we even have a variety of different facial features, hair textures and hair types.  A majority of blacks are mixed with Caucasian, Native American, Asian and many other ethnicities.  I think its beautiful.  However we still cant get along.  I call it internal racism where light skin individuals think of themselves as better than dark skin individuals or vis versa.  Unfortunately this is something that has been present since slavery, the slave mentality.  Light skin slaves were permitted to work in the master’s house and the darker slaves had to work in the fields.  Moving forward in history during the Harlem Renaissance there was a group by the name of the Blue Vein Society.  This group consisted of prestigious light skin blacks.  To join you had to be rich enough and light enough.   Presently the media has a lot to do with how blacks a perceived as far as skin color.  Take for instance the fashion industr, there is commercial fashion and high fashion.  High fashion tends to use darker skin models like Alek Wek and the commercial industry uses lighter skin models like Trya Banks.  Commercial fashion is more mainstream holding a greater influence on the way people see black beauty.  Taking it one step further I would like to point out rap videos.  The lighter skin video vixon is always the love interest or the one with the most attention.  No wonder there is a wedge between the two, one skin color is put on a higher platform than the other.   Darker skin people have been under represented as being beautiful.  The closer to white you are the better, right? We are all the same but have qualities that make us uniquely different.  We can’t move forward until everyone understands and celebrates this.  I want everyone to be represented and accounted for.

I want every color from Aber Rose to Grace Jones represented

So I thought about my lighting set up its going to be a 1:1 lighting ratio.  All of my subjects both male and female will be wearing white wife beaters.  Each subject will be placed on a black background.  All subjects will make direct eye contact with the viewer.

I was thinking of having this as my format with 15 to 20 people in each of the boxes.

I’ve also taken the first step and thats getting my idea out there.   I’ve posted some stuff on my facebook page. It was real informal and I intend to go farther with contacting people.  1. My facebook page 2. telling friends and family about my project and 3.  Asking people to pose for me and be my subject.

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