Wednesday 29 February 2012

"Kaffee macht schön!"

Call it an occupational hazard of someone already drawn to research and write about the historical links between beauty, race, and power, but I have begun to observe a strange phenomenon on the streets of Berlin… 

Here, where at first it seems there is almost no visibility of black people in advertising, it is always striking when – suddenly – brown faces on posters hove into view…

© Raphael Hoermann

Each of these adverts …


© Raphael Hoermann

is intended to promote…

© Raphael Hoermann

coffee–drinking. (Oh, and eating chocolate…whatever takes your fancy.)

Its no secret that, historically, images of people of African and Asian descent have been used to advertise the tropical commodities that their sweated labour helped to produce. Coffee, chocolate, tea, sugar, rum…the list is long.

And in spite of the tendency to express utter dismay when ethnic minorities complain of racism in German cultural institutions.

Germany is no exception…



 














These brand icons (Austrian and German) have recently undergone makeovers...


 












to – literally – tone down racial overtures of images designed to sell coffee and chocolate.