Angélica Dass: The beauty of human skin in every color

The last country has been abolished slavery for 128 years. But in this speech, the speaker said that the colour of our skin still gives a first impression in modern living world.

She Was born in a family full of colours. Her father is the son of a maid from whom he inherited an intense dark chocolate tone. He was adopted by one lady,  who has a porcelain skin and cotton-like hair. Her husband, speaker’s grandpa, was between a vanilla and strawberry yogurt tone. Her mother is a cinnamon-skin daughter of a native Brazilian, with a pinch of hazel and honey. 

She was growing up in this colourful family. Inside the family, everything seems quite nice. But outside home, things were different. Because of the skin colour. Her skin was brown, but people said she was black. One day when she took her cousin to school, people thought that she was the maid. She was even treated like a prostitute just because she was walking alone on the beach with European friends. And many times, visiting her grandma or friends in upper class buildings, she was invited not to use the main elevator. 

Years later, she married a Spaniard. Bu not any Spaniard. She chose one with the skin colour of a lobster when sunburnt. Since then, she tarted to think what the colour of her children will be? Then she started to make her personal exercise as a photographer, with the topic “Humanae”.

Humanae is a pursuit to highlight true colours, rather than the untrue white, red, black or yellow associated with race. She portrayed  the subjects in a white background. She choose an 11-pixel square from the nose, paint the background, and look for the corresponding colour in the industrial palette, Pantone. She started with her family and friends. It spreader like a snow ball rolling. The project had invitations, exhibitions, physical formats, galleries and museums. She portrayed more than 3000 people in 13 different con tries, 19 different cities. Those portraits made everybody rethink how they see each other. There were so many questions. And also she was excited about the people sharing their thought about the work with her.  

Humanae found a new life in a different variety of fields. Illustrators and art students using it as a reference for their sketches and their studies. Research in the fields of anthropology,  physics and neuroscience use Humanae with different scientific approaches related to human ethnicity, optophysiology, face recognition or Alzheimer’s.

One of the most important impacts of the project is that Humanae was chosen to be the cover of Foreigh Affairs, one of the most relevant political publications. 

Brazil, the country she was borne, is the last country who abolished slavery. She was hoping that they have to work hard to abolish discrimination.