People's Pantone colors

Pantonnnn

Brazilian artist Angélica Dass is creating an ongoing photo series of portraits of people in front of backgrounds that match the Pantone color of their faces. "The project’s objective is to record and catalog all possible human skin tones," she writes. humanæ (via FP)

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SamSam

Interesting that, so far at least (in this work in progress), it’s about 95% photos of people that most would call Caucasians. The screenshot above is one of the few instances showing a bit more variety.

I guess one of the points is that we are all one great big range, and that arbitrary categories are arbitrary, so we can’t say that 95% of the photos are of Caucasians. But this would be a bit more obvious if there were a rather broader sampling of this great big range of ours.
- SamSam
  
  A more representative screenshot of the work:
  - Boundegar
    
    I’m surprised because I think of Brasilians as more racially diverse than Americans. Maybe I’m wrong.
    - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
      
      Last time I looked, all Brasilians were Americans. I don’t believe, generally, that X can be more Y than they are.
      - GlyphGryph
        
        What? What does this even… What do you mean by… am I missing something here?
        
        Why are Brazilians Americans now? And how how is it impossible for the average racial diversity of a group to be larger than the average of the supergroup?(Maybe I’m missing a joke?)
      - millie fink
        
        GG, I think what you’re overlooking is the fatuity of people in the U.S. who don’t realize that there are other “Americas.” Like, you know, South America.
      - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
        
        replying to GlyphGryph
        
        Being American is not something that has suddenly happened to Brazilians.
        
        They’re from Brazil, which is in South America, which is in America. Folk from the USA and Canada, being in North America, are also Americans.
      - colin gardner
        
        I’ve heard this argument a lot lately, and am not sure i get the point. Do people in Brazil identify as American? How about people in Canada? Or do they identify as Brazilian and Canadian respectively? Unfortunately United Statesian doesn’t roll off the tongue so the word has come to refer to residents (citizens?) of the United States of America. Do Brazilians experience a great deal of angst about this? If the point is to try to poke holes in the U.S.’ superiority complex surely there are a million targets with more substance.
      - Garth Wright
        
        In Anglo-America, America is short for US America. In Latin-America, America = America. You are all welcome :)
      - $19428857
        
        On vacation in Toronto, I spent the weekend with some Canadian friends and friends of friends, one of whom when he found out I was “American” went out of his way to explain how the US didn’t own the word “American” and he was just as “American” as I was. Not that I care. Anyway, for the lulz, I decided to counter-troll by accepting his premise, and referred to all nominally Canadian things as “American” for the rest of the afternoon, e.g.. “Toronto is one of the cleanest and most liveable American cities.” He kind of dropped the whole thing after about two hours. Calling himself an American was cool as long as he thought it irritated me, but he was loathe to lose the Canadian distinction. Hee-hee.
      - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
        
        Whether you, or they, or Alberto Fujimori like it or not, all Canadians and Brazilians are American. In the same way as all Japanese are Asian, all Tasmanians are Australian, all Lithuanians are European, all Kenyans are African, all Penguins are Antarctican.
        
        I can agree with Mr Gardner. United Statesian is ridiculous. But Gore Vidal – an American from that USA – came up with the perfectly serviceable USAnian, which I’d recommend, were it my place, which it is not, to any who feel (or wish to appear) sensitive about such things.
        
        Personally I couldn’t give (much of) a toss, but the original comment which appeared to exclude Brazilians from continental America was what started all this.
        
        Edit – except I withdraw the penguin thing. It’s not ‘in the same way’. Penguinitude, unlike – say – lithuanianality, is a biological and not a geographical deal.
      - penguinchris
        
        Also re: penguins, they don’t live exclusively on Antarctica (the next biggest population is actually in South America, too ;)
    - llazy8
      
      Her blog is in Spanish, not Portuguese, and her Bio there says that while she’s from Rio, she took her MFA in Madrid. No mention of where she’s currently working, but it’s possible that her very small sample of people is from Spain.
- http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait
  
  everyone’s idea of caucasian is different. In brasil for instance (since she is brasileira), friends of mine with dark hair were called ‘loiro’ (blonde).
  - SamSam
    
    That’s fine, but if we represent the colors of the people in the world as one big pie chart, her project is strongly concentrated in one little slice. Darker people make up a large segment of the human race, yet they are only represented there by about 4 people out of over 150.
    
    Again, it’s a work in progress, and it’s the sort of project that makes it hard to criticize the racial disparity because the whole point is that it’s all about blurring racial lines. But you’d have to be blind not to notice some giant holes in the work so far.
    - llazy8
      
      I wonder if people who haven’t gotten the shaft their whole lives over their skin tone might be more likely to sign up to be compared to a color chart.
      
      Also, her sample size is still so small that I bet she’s still shooting the acquaintances of friends.
      
      Agreed that so far the work is not even close to showing a representative range of human skin color. And that unless the effort is made to do it, this work could be just as blinding as the types of false diversity (token woman, token handicapped person, token black person) you can get on TV sitcoms. I’m gonna go ahead and assume that the artist wants a large and diverse sample size, and that this publicity will help her. Tks for pointing out the disparity.
millie fink

Arbitrary categories are indeed arbitrary. “White” and other racial categories are total fictions, and almost totally elastic and porous as well.

Excellent idea in these photos for exposing that ongoing problem.* I wish I could get a poster like this.

*Not the problems of porosity and elasticity. I mean the racism still caused by adherence to the idea itself of “race.”
http://danfraser.myopenid.com/ Dan

It feels like a more corporate version of this:

http://www.nga.gov/press/2009/byron_kim.shtm

People don’t come in Pantone(R) colours. I wonder if X-Rite has sponsored the work.
- nachoproblem
  
  Everything comes in Pantone colors.
  - http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC
    
    Except certain Hexachrome colours.
    - nachoproblem
      
      Don’t forget Octarine, if you’re a Terry Pratchett fan.
CLamb

I can’t wait until my Pantone color specification appears on my driver’s license! Luckily, I don’t tan much but those who do might need a range of specifications or perhaps a summer color and a winter color.
- chgoliz
  
  There’s a reason they’ve taken “hair color” off as a descriptor.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KLDXI7FI3NUHYC23SUHMGLNBCQ Tom

My Pantone is Bright White Laser Printer Paper.

Ahh.. the fluorescent lights of the office with their comforting hum and milky glow.
semiotix

Neat project. But for full credit, she needs to get this guy on a plane to Brazil.
- theophrastvs
  
  Buy him a ticket next to the person that eats carrots by the truck-load (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/238/if-you-eat-too-many-carrots-will-you-turn-orange ) we don’t believe in ‘green sickness’ anymore, right? (“hypochromic anemia”) there’s a project: a full rainbow spectrum of skin color without the aid of body paints or photoshoppery
Sparrow

Will I be able to buy bandages in pantone matched colours, because “skin tone” just doesn’t match?
- millie fink
  
  Whiteness is . . . a flesh-colored bandage.
  
  http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qIdxc0EEs44/SyOqZZ5y1nI/AAAAAAAAA0Y/th2Xhh9HFD0/s1600-h/WhiteIs1.jpg
bumblebeeeeeee

dude, you are using the wrong colour system!
Richard Kirk

Prior art…

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2194
- bumblebeeeeeee
  
  That link is not prior art. Using the word Pantone in a sentence, in a comic (i.e. art context), at a date preceding this use, does not make prior art. This idea is not built on or developed from that idea.
blueelm

Eh… this just reminds me of ordering makeup.
- bumblebeeeeeee
  
  exactly.
hellishmundane

pantone
http://twitter.com/davidmang davidmang

This is an awesome way to fragment White Supremacy groups. They’ll just splinter into groups like the 88-9 C Klan and the 98-8 C Wizards. They’ll declare each other Color Matching Traitors, and the ensuing war will destroy an entire ignorant ideology.

And that’s how Pantone defeated racism.
- blueelm
  
  Wait till they realize how pale some Asians are. They’ll really freak.
DewiMorgan

I *love* this. Like all art, it has many interpretations.

To me, it accents the retardation I have experienced in my life when speaking to graphic artists who demand that their website have their logo in the correct Pantone color. Sure, I’d dutifully look up the nearest RGB equivalent and bite my tongue, and wait to be called to their office where they would hold up their brochure against their monitor and tell me that the color was wrong.

This just takes that one further – skin color isn’t even a surface thing, as renderers are beginning to appreciate: it’s a function of the opacity of the skin and underlying fats, their depth, the location and dilation of blood vessels, the heart rate, when the pic was taken relative to the last time the heart beat, the hue and angle and intensity of incident light, the moisture of the skin, the surroundings, what the viewer’s eyes were looking at previously, and so on.

It’s as arbitrary as using a single number to describe all your fighting skills in an RPG. And I like that this project calls that out.

But I very much doubt that any graphic designer will see the same thing in this art.
LYNDON

Isn’t C for coated paper stock? People aren’t normally all that shiny.

Sure, I’d dutifully look up the nearest RGB equivalent and bite my tongue, and wait to be called to their office where they would hold up their brochure against their monitor and tell me that the color was wrong.

This is the reason everyone in the world should callibrate their monitors and all the software should support colour profiles. Actually, I hear you. And from http://humanae.tumblr.com/About I’m not entirely clear what the process is and whether it would make as much sense to use [some particular profile of] RGB.

That said, I too love this.
- DewiMorgan
  
  This is the reason everyone in the world should callibrate their monitors and all the software should support colour profiles.
  
  Hah! You very nearly made me froth at the mouth with that one! :P Delightful, thank you!
  
  It reminds me of seeing a stack of plastic bags for a UK supermarket a few years ago, with an orange logo on. The color was clearly very wrong: it was a dark, burned orange color, more of a brown: it made me stop a moment and wonder how they’d ever got that accepted. But then I saw that if you pulled just one bag off the pile, and opened the bag, the logo looked “right”. But because they were semitransparent, multiple layers of the orange looked wrong. So there’s no way to create a semitransparent logo that will look right in all situations, with all backgrounds.
  
  In the same way, there’s no way to calibrate a screen that will be correct for all people and eyewear and times of day.
  - bumblebeeeeeee
    
    anyone calibrating a monitor is going to have fixed lighting.
- bumblebeeeeeee
  
  unless this project is to be printed, the colour system she used makes no sense for screens nor photos.
10xor01

Neat idea. Take that Crayola!
http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC

http://asmartbear.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Grey_square_optical_illusion.png

What colour is A? What colour is B?