EXIT : No. 81 Negritud = Blackness

All the photographers appearing this issue of the magazine are black. Most of the texts are written by black writers and researchers too. How strange it is to define people on the basis of colour when we know there is but one race (human) and thousands of different shades in the Pantone colour system that is human skin. No one is completely black or, far less so, completely white. And yet too much importance seems to be attached to colour. It automatically defines the social, cultural and political status of every single one of us. Photography has played an active part in this symbolic cataloguing, which changes and subverts itself little by little. This issue of EXIT is dedicated to black photography, to photographs taken by black photographers and artists encompassing a wide range of countries, age groups and interests. It may be that the only thing they have in common is that they are all black. Or perhaps it would be better to say that they are not white, that their skin is dark in colour. But to attempt to boil everything down to a question of skin colour is absurd because what is really at stake are far more complex issues such as inclusion, difference, stigmatisation, privacy, background, social class, customs, wealth and, above all, prejudice. In other words, what is involved here is the judging of people purely on account of external signs and traits, without anything being known about them. These prejudices and the creating of stereotypes on the basis of superficial characteristics, as superficial as skin colour, impact on and shape the lives of millions of people around the world.
source: issuu.com