Seven types of digital blackface produced by Boglarka Balogh
(with the assistance of graphic artist Csaba Szábó)
I'm sure that some readers will recall the amusing case of Boglarka Balogh, the blonde, blue-eyed Hungarian idealist, who naively published a series of self-portraits in which she had digitally transposed her own facial features on to those of seven African tribal women, instantly provoking a furious online reaction.
The project was intended to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by such women and to celebrate their unique beauty and cultural diversity. But Balogh, a human rights lawyer and journalist, was swiftly - often brutally - informed that, despite her good intentions, the images were offensive, degrading, and narcissistic.
It seems no matter how woke you may be - and no matter how skilled you are with the latest photo editing software - blackface is never acceptable and white people should stay in their own lane.
Not wanting to add insult to injury, Balogh made no reply to her critics and removed her work from the Bored Panda blog on which she'd posted it (though not before it had already received over 130,000 views), advising everyone to keep calm and love all humanity.
Obviously, such advice is inadequate as well as nauseating. But how then should one respond to this case and the issues raised? The answer, I think, has to do with a queer form of alien sympathy and the poetic imagination. And we can discover why by turning to the work of D. H. Lawrence ...
Click here to read part 2 of this post.
