ZWARTE PIET.

ZWARTE PIET by Anna Fox, with text by Mieke Bal Black Dog Publications Ltd., January 2000, $34.95 ISBN 1-901-033386-4

Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), a mischievous, black-faced attendant to Sinterklaas (a Dutch version of Santa Claus) is the subject of a new book of photographs by the British artist Anna Fox. Accompanying the photographs is an illuminating essay by Dutch cultural critic Mieke Bal. Bal gives a personal, nuanced account of her own wrestling with the incongruence of a black minstrel tradition amidst The Netherlands' sea of whiteness. This fascinating holiday tradition interweaves complex narratives of race, gender (most Zwarte Piets are portrayed by girls), and class (Zwarte Piet is a servant). Bal questions the relevance of this continuing custom in a country that now includes people of African descent. As part of its growth into a multi-racial society, The Netherlands is struggling with a tradition that no longer seems comfortable even as, for some, it is oddly comforting. Bal shares the perils and strange twists of this journey toward defining a new "Dutch" self.

Unfortunately, Anna Fox's photographs of Dutch sitters adorned in the costume of Zwarte Piet are not nearly as interesting. Taken between 1993 and 1998, these photographs are composed like 17th-century Dutch portraits crossed with contemporary mug shots. I was left wanting to know the background stories of these sitters who range from teen to adult. What do they think of the Zwarte Piet tradition? I am reminded of Toni Morrison's seminal text, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Vintage, 1993) which discusses blacks in America as the ghosts in the machine of American literature. It would seem we also serve that role among the Dutch, and unfortunately this book doesn't do enough to shed light on the subject.