Light Skin Dark Skin (2019) is fine art and documentary photographer Abhi Chinniah’s debut photo essay. Stemming from her own experiences with skin colour discrimination, the work examines how colourism can shape identity and self-worth. Seeking to understand the journeys of people who experience colourism across its spectrum, the artist spoke with her sitters about topics ranging from the use of skin-lightening products to inter-community and generational dialogue around skin colour.

Photographed within a post-colonial Western landscape, the sitters wear culturally significant clothing that is personal to their stories – an ongoing visual motif in the artist’s photographic work. The interplay between their garments and surroundings evokes questions around migrant identities and the influence skin colour can have on belonging. In exhibition format, the portraits are accompanied by statements from the sitters.

This online gallery brings together photographs from Light Skin Dark Skin and the artist’s subsequent photo essay, Melanin Rising (2022), which explores the representation of dark-skinned people in the media and how these portrayals shape social perceptions of dark skin tones.