In effort to access what they perceive as a more desirable level of society - one typically defined by light complexions - darker skinned persons in Jamaica's inner-city communities have started the dangerous and controversial practice of skin bleaching to lighten their skin tones. This process, which involves harmful and potentially lethal chemicals, can cause significant damage and anomalies to their complexions. The practice has been carried out for decades but has become more mainstream in the past five years, most notably in 2011 when Jamaican dancehall artist Vybz Kartel likened bleaching, which he practices and condones, to simply another element of style.

Instead of readily denouncing bleaching, this photographic project was conceived as an avenue of understanding the practice and a means of attempting to highlighta certain kind of beauty where many see none. While photographing the small group of adolscents pictured here, I questioned their motivations for bleaching. The majority couldn't give a straight answer. A few said they didn't really know, it was just for style, while others said, simply, that it increased their confidence - they felt that they looked better with lighter skin. The inclination here is to read deeper, to suggest that these sentiments are perphaps born out of a flawed concept of beauty that prevails in Jamaica and throughout the majority of images put forward globally via advertising. But, then again, perphaps there is merit in taking the words and motivations of these adolscents at face value.

Published in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism Issue 41, July 2013

Project funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts