The photo showed a figure in white carrying a pair of sneakers. But it looked an awful lot like a Ku Klux Klan member’s pointed hood foregrounded by the dangling feet of a lynching victim, according to social media users.
The image was posted to the Instagram account of the shoe company Converse, a subsidiary of Nike, to promote the Chuck 70 X sneaker, which was released globally Aug. 27.
The photo in the post below is cropped. Online, an uncropped version circulated that was more striking in its resemblance to a hood and hanging. Almost immediately, social media users condemned the image.
“Shadow, light, and composition. Every photographer can tell you, whoever did this ad knew EXACTLY what they were doing,” the Chicago-based photographer Stephanie Schwartz wrote on Threads on Thursday.
Another Threads user resurfaced an image from a Converse collaboration with the Copenhagen brand Palmes that featured a man on a ladder holding a pair of shoes slung across the branch of a tree, writing “this photo doubles down on the messaging.”
Converse removed the image from several of its social media accounts and websites, but it was still visible on the brand’s Philippines website Friday.
“We’re sorry,” the brand said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. “We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened and we will do better.”
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