The first thing which lets me down when I am nervous is my Spanish.
(Laughter)
Well, let's see.
Due to my origin, the social and ethnic reality in which I was born,
I have aways thought about the classification of colors
associated with race this way: red, white, black and yellow.
A reduction of something which, to me, is really much richer.
This is my family, adopted members included.
I carry in my blood, or at least in my eyes,
the distinct colors that make the Brazilian population.
Among them, I've never felt different.
But, when far from them, I sometimes do.
That's why I came up with the idea
to develop a catalogue of colors, but only real colors.
To do so, I wanted to find a secure mode.
Something that would be an industrial system,
where all the colors are of equal importance.
Therefore I chose Pantone scales,
in which primary colors have the same importance as mixed ones.
Photos using this color system
are made in a very simple and easy to reproduce way.
On white background.
Whan i take portraits on a white background,
I always pick a 11x11 pixel square from the nose.
And then I apply this color to the background
and look for an appropriate color in the Pantone system.
The choice of the nose is intentional,
because it is the first part of body that changes color because of sunbathing,
or when we are frozen, or as a result of drinking too much...
So that no one is the same color.
Like this man.
From the very beginning, the project was intended to be realised online,
globally, with public announcements.
Absolutely everyone is welcomed to participate in the project,
which has got so much empathy from the public,
and, finally, all these people are our new identities.
They are online identities.
This project, which was started in a customary way
and has taken huge proportions because I'm always short of colors,
was planned as a project moving across all five continents.
The post remarkable thing about this great project
is the number of works which have risen from it.
It's an unfinished project, yet it's producing things.
One is Kyle Mathewson,
professor of the University of Illinois,
who uses the portraits from Humanae
for his physiology classes.
This is John Seymour, John Math Guy, who has decided
to do a statistic analysis of the colors in a scientific way
to find out the percentage of each one, whether there more of one than the others.
This is Emily Hardin' brilliant work, who is interested
in a formal range of faces presented in the project.
I publish the photos on Tumblr, she draws them on paper.
From Los Ángeles, we are entirely connected by this unfinished job.
Here is the work of Ana Vasconcelos, a teacher who lives in São Paulo,
who presents the project to her students,
she gives them dyes to mix then they paint with them.
It is to create this personal and untransferable identity
and completely destroy what is known as a "flesh color" pencil .
The point is that the pencil is not of "body color", not at all.
(Applause)
One of the most emotional things and one of the main rewards,
also going back to what I said about my family,
are the emails I get from families with adopted children
about this family game about identifying those pictures
realizing that all the colors equalize us.
This is the main reward of the project.
This family is wonderful.
I always say that with Humanae, I've learned to be a mere catalyst,
I am a channel through which people partly tell my story,
and keep telling their own too, because they tell what I'm saying.
Humanae is like an invitation to press a "share" button inside our brain
and equalize us all through tints.
There are 1076 of us and I hope there will be thousands and thousands.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)