Racial Bias in Photography

Kodak introduced the Kodachrome in 1935. This was a breakthrough in photographic technology at the time and brought color photography to the masses. Color photography had begun in the 1850s, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that it started becoming commonplace in photography and in motion pictures. These films have layers of color channels that light passes through and leaves a ‘negative’ imprint on the acetate that is then developed. Developing these pictures is a science, and this science needed to be calibrated to get the best results.

This calibration was then focused on the biggest clients- white families and the film industry casting mainly white men and women. Enter, the Shirley Card. Shirley Page was an employee at Kodak in the 1950s. Kodak believed that her image- white skin and dark hair against a pale background showcasing a winning smile was the perfect photograph, and put the image on a card surrounded by color blocks (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black, White and shades of Grey). This was marketed as the Shirley card- the card used to calibrate all photographs. This card changed the way society saw people.

Although it wasn’t an intentionally exclusive decision, the Shirley card set the white skin as the default skin tone. It worked great for developing lighter skin tones. But any skin tones which were darker and had black and brown shades were unable to find an identity in this science. As a result, photographs of dark skinned people were devoid of textures, of characteristics, of light and shadow and the personality on their faces, and presented them as dark skinned ‘faces’ without really capturing the emotions and the humanity in those faces.

The effect of this is carried on to this day where even though technology has caught up with society to be able to capture the darker skin tones, it left a big dent along the way. Photographs of black men and women were shown as lacking emotion to eliminate their humanity which I believe was instrumental to promote racial laws and practices throughout the 1950s-1970s that are used even today. This series of pictures from the 1960s, all from the Philadelphia P.D  show the difference between the mugshots of the black men and women as opposed to those of their white counterparts.

Mugshots of black men and women vs mugshots of white men and women.

The first call to action to challenge the Shirley card to make it more inclusive came in the 1990s, but unfortunately even then, it wasn’t out of empathy or for being inclusive. In fact, Jim Lyon, the Kodak technician who first used a black model for the Shirley cards said he wasn’t trying to be politically correct. He just wanted a superior product that capable of handling any color on earth ⁽¹⁾. It was in fact, the furniture industry and the chocolate industry that were trailblazers in this push for being able to capture all colors. Before we start getting proud of them for stepping up, it should be noted that they too had vested interests. The chocolate industry was disappointed by Kodak as they could not differentiate between white chocolate and dark chocolate in their advertisements while the furniture industry complained that the kodak films could not sufficiently differentiate between the shades of wood. It was these two driving forces that eventually led to Kodak introducing new color films and introducing new Shirley cards having Black and Asian models in the 1970s, and eventually Multi Racial and Hispanic models in the 1990s. Even with these developments though, it only helped when the people were all the same or similar skin tones. With multi racial people in the photos, the calibration helped show the features of lighter skin more and struggled to pick up the features on darker skin.

Even today when we have the technology by and large to capture the different tones, photographers, particularly a lot of white photographers still struggle to capture the darker skin accurately ⁽⁵⁾. Visual media has further helped in perpetuating objectifications darker skinned people. Black men are criminalized as they are made to look like “brutes” and “thugs” ⁽⁸⁾ and black women are sexualized ⁽⁹⁾. Photographers and editors have to put in the extra effort to get the contrast and the lighting right when shooting darker skinned models ⁽³⁾. Light skin remains as the default skin tone even today. Even digital technology is built with racial biases. Motion capturing AI recognizes lighter skin more easily than darker skin. Lighter skin is still considered the ‘default’ in most cameras or algorithms where different skin tones are involved. There was recent uproar on Twitter when it was revealed that the algorithm that crops the pictures posted in a tweet to show on the timeline, or the order in which the pictures get posted had default racist algorithms ⁽⁷⁾, where even though it wasn’t intentionally malicious, it favored the lighter skin over darker skin. Zoom has been the centerpiece for most businesses for the last couple of years, and even the AI that is used for the virtual backgrounds and filters have had trouble identifying darker skin tones.

Technology faces this problem since it is developed to do what the human developers want it to do. A lot of the racial biases prevalent in technology may not be directly harmful, but they come from a place where these biases caused major harm and the remains of these racial biases are prevalent even today.

– Imran

SOURCES

1. https://dustyoldthing.com/shirley-cards-history/

2. https://www.fiftytimesaroundthesun.com/2020/06/22/the-shirley-cards/

3. https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/shirley-card-racial-photographic-bias

4. https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/the-shirley-card/

5. https://calgaryjournal.ca/2021/02/28/time-for-a-new-lens-the-hidden-racism-behind-photography/

6. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/25/racism-colour-photography-exhibition

7. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/21/twitter-apologises-for-racist-image-cropping-algorithm

8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5004736/

9. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1437&context=etds

10. Feature image source- https://www.fiftytimesaroundthesun.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/kodak-shirley-card-helps-calibrate-film-cameras-for-various-skin-tones-1024×805.jpg