HOWEVER, being that it’s supposed to be part of an “AIDS in Africa” campaign, that does put this squarely in blackface territory.

Still, as a black man who’s always on the lookout for this kinda garbage (for example, I got into a heated debate at my agency today about the use of an Asian man’s image for the “Free to be Geeky” part of an advertorial), I’ve gotta say these kinds of shots are sometimes just attempts at creative photography.

To use the work of my friend Stephen Eastwood as an example (I hope I don’t sound like I’m plugging his work… just trying to illustrate a point):

Latina model, digitally darkened skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/recent/full/21.jpg

White model, blue skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/beauty/gal2/full/12.jpg

White model, dark skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/fashion/gal5/full/11.jpg

Black model, white, flaky skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/fashion/gal3/full/13.jpg

Black model, darkened skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/fashion/gal3/full/15.jpg

Biracial model, hi-contrast, somewhat-darkened skin- http://www.stepheneastwood.com/beauty/gal5/full/9.jpg

My point? While I have to question this Kate Moss photo, sometimes, these shots are merely artistic compositions.

Kate Moss Newsletter of the Week

……

… And there was also a full-sized poster of the image inside that issue of The Independent too. To raise money for an HIV AIDS charity. Lead story in the same issue’s Health section, ironically,: “Ultra-slim models ‘are preferred by women’”

Assuming this had to be a black/white thing in the first place, given the spectrum of shading on the continent, fashion and lifestyle industries, regardless:

(a) operate on appropriation and plagarism (but never, ever theft)
(b) apparently hold that you can gain insight into a people by donning their look
(c) you actually need to emulate the look and style of a people with whom you’re fascinated in order to treat them with respect and decency as opposed to veneration bordering on the exotic, erotic, or mystic

About a week earlier, The Independent’s editor-in-chief warned readers they were going to be treated to a special Armani-designed issue, saying: “[he] will bring his own, highly distinctive view of the world, and his unique creative vision to the pages of the newspaper, and there promise to be some spectacular visual treats.” They just didn’t say how, sheesh…

This Kate Moss cover apparently p.o.’d the rival The Guardian (UK) newspaper so greatly, they actually devoted two articles spanning five pages to the issue of “blacking up” in today’s (Sep. 22) issue.

Hannah Pool “Return to the Dark Ages” (commentary on “The Independent” cover)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1878299,00.html

Patrick Barkham “About Face” (history of blacking up, UK perspective especially in opera/theater)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1878318,00.html

[Side note: Pool, the Guardian’s health and beauty columnist, was adopted from an Eritrean orphanage and raised in England by a white father. She wrote a memoir about her return visit to Africa to experience meeting the birth family she never knew called “My Father’s Daughter” which came out last year.]

I get their point: buying into a framework that posits “politcal correctness” and “subversiveness” as your two extremes ultimately leads to this kind of excusable crap where any type of expression that’s not only offensive but damaging is sanctioned by simply saying “don’t be so sensitive”.

It also forces too many constraints and too much silence upon those who feel harmed to the point where no one can actually complain about anything, for fear about bringing “politics” into anything that doesn’t offend people with more “liberal” (codeword “open-minded”) tastes.

And all of this seems will obscure the good intentions of The Independent’s ongoing effort to benefit the RED initiative, tied to the UN-affiliated Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. Last May, Bono was guest editor for a day. For these special issues, half the revenue goes to the charity.

There was actually some interesting, provoking content from a range of public and celebrity figures speaking out on some unfamiliar perspectives, precisely to get people to pay attention to things they otherwise wouldn’t, on issues of concern affecting Africa. You can read all of it for free for about the next couple of days (search for the Sep. 21 content): http://news.independent.co.uk

On a larger level, this issue will also cloud the larger media ruckus at the United Nations this week, in which you saw the US (and by extension rich nations) being taken to task by nations and leaders you normally don’t get to see and hear. They bullied the US for not keeping their financial promises and obligations to poorer countries.

It ended with the UN itself basically saying the World Bank is crap when it comes to the needs of the poor, and it’s time for a new UN agency. The West however is saying no way. Meanwhile, the voices and faces usually left out of the debate remain on the sideline and magzine covers…

So message seems to be: If we can’t even portray the issues with the actual faces who live most with them, guess who we won’t have speaking most vocally about them, and who won’t be listening to them.

Now, the question is, is the black makeup itself offensive or is it the fact that the model is a white American (I think) or both?

I’m wondering if this “counts” as blackface as we have usually seen it in the US - i.e. there are no red lips, no outlining of the eyes, etc. To my eyes, the Japanese models were in obvious blackface. This photo really makes it seem more like an ebony-colored statue, than “blackface.”

But that may have been a deliberate choice on the part of the magazine or the photographer/artistic director, in order to deflect immediate criticism or create “plausible deniability”…