Apparently to “raise awareness” of African women and their “secluded cultures”, a Hungarian journalist photoshopped her own face onto portraits of black women.
But her project, posted online in early December, sparked widespread criticism. In the face of mounting outrage, Boglarka Balogh took the images down yesterday, apologising but saying her “intention was 100% pure with this tribal art”.
You could look at this as a case of hi-tech blackface, an incident in which yet another white person thinks it’s amusing to dress up as black, when many black people don’t have that sort of luxury.
But Balogh wasn’t trying to make fun of black people or parody them like Halloween party-goers do every year. She was actually trying to help.