Untitled, from the series Under the Black Sun,

1991–1993

The series Under the Black Sun was made in the Andean city of Cusco, Peru, where I began to study a photographic technique practiced by street photographers, who took instant passport photographs of individuals. The photographs are in their inverted negative stage. Once the photographers printed that negative, at times retouched with red dye (diluted mercurochrome), the subject would appear as if they had fairer skin—much like European colonizers—not the brown skin tonalities of Indigenous citizens. I worked with mainly the same technique, but I stopped midway, with the portrait still in its evolving version of the self. After almost three centuries of Spanish colonialism, Peru has been defined by the oppressor and the oppressed, and skin tone served as a racial and social identifier. By not providing the lightened skin-tone version of the photograph, the standards set by colonialism are undermined.

Milagros de la Torre, artist