MelaninMelanin, the heterogeneous polymer responsible for skin pigmentation and photoprotectionPhotoprotection from sunlight, has been difficult to understand. The main reason for this difficulty is the dearth of structural data and its featureless monotonic spectra that span across all of the UV and visible regions. The lack of clarity about its structure causes challenges in arriving at a concrete understanding of structure-function correlation as far as its absorption spectraAbsorption spectra are concerned. We will discuss the different aspects of this problem and the efforts made to enhance our understanding in this direction. Furthermore, the processes that happen in melaninMelanin after irradiation by light will also be discussed. Some of the understanding that could be amassed about its spectacular optical properties and photostability will be explained.