Fairer People = Beautiful People + Powerful People

Arpan Mukherjee's showcase at the Government College of Fine Arts during Chennai Photo Biennale 2019. A discussion was initiated among a group of dark complexion boys and girls on their experience of being dark. Issues about discrimination on the basis of skin colour and its possible reasons were discussed. Apart from the general thought that it derived from our colonial past, they also think that in our society it has a roll in terms of power demonstration. Arpan Mukherjee, used wet plate collodion and albumen print process to make their portrait, which has an established connection to anthropological photographic documentation process of Indian race and tribes by British photographers. The process is blue sensitive hence except ‘blue’ every skin tone will represent as black.