Color film was built for white people. Here's what it did to dark skin.

The unfortunate history of racial bias in photography.

For decades, the color film available to consumers was built for white people. The chemicals coating the film simply weren't adequate to capture a diversity of darker skin tones. And the photo labs established in the 1940s and 50s even used an image of a white woman, called a Shirley card, to calibrate the colors for printing.

Concordia University professor Lorna Roth has researched the evolution of skin tone imaging. She explained in a 2009 paper how the older technology distorted the appearance of black subjects:

"Problems for the African-American community, for example, have included reproduction of facial images without details, lighting challenges, and ashen-looking facial skin colours contrasted strikingly with the whites of eyes and teeth."

How this would affect non-white people seemingly didn't occur to those who designed and operated the photo systems. In an essay for Buzzfeed, writer and photographer Syreeta McFadden described growing up with film that couldn't record her actual appearance:

"The inconsistencies were so glaring that for a while, I thought it was impossible to get a decent picture of me that captured my likeness. I began to retreat from situations involving group photos. And sure, many of us are fickle about what makes a good portrait. But it seemed the technology was stacked against me. I only knew, though I didn’t understand why, that the lighter you were, the more likely it was that the camera — the film — got your likeness right."

Many of the technological biases have since been corrected (though, not all of them, as explained in the video above). Still, we often see controversies about the misrepresentation of non-white subjects in magazines and advertisements. What are we to make of the fact that these images routinely lighten the skin of women of color?

Tools are only as good as the people who use them. The learned preference for lighter skin is ubiquitous in many parts of the world, and it starts early. That's an infinitely tougher problem than improving the color range of photo technology.

[angelthman]

Ironically, when B&W film first came out, it couldn't photograph blue eyes very well. Blue eyes registered as white, and people looked like ghosts. Some actors with blue eyes would be told they weren't the right type for film.

[ploopy]

I can’t believe it took chocolate and wood for people to address this issue

[edwardmakabling]

America: white and black people mixed in a photo, problem.
Me as an Asian: we didnt even think about that here.

[honoredhollow]

Seems like people didn't really watch the video. Also, physics and chemistry are not racist, but design can definitely be.

[TiaJonesiful]

Kinda reminds me how the “peach” coloured crayon used to be called “skin” as if it were the only colour skin could possibly be

[SynergyCeleste]

Absolutely, true... I went to photography school in the late 70's and Black people were hard to photograph, UNLESS you had a CORRECT exposure. Once I let it slip that I was perfecting my light metering, because I had to get the darker skin tones exposed correctly and my subject called me a RACIST!!! Obviously she had NO idea how film and light worked!

[lealedoux]

In middle school the _professional_ photographers they hired _every year_ for the annual class pictures could never get a decent enough lighting for the black kids' faces to be distinguishable. And that was less than ten years ago so it's kind of frustrating

[legalize.brokkoli]

“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein

[teenygozer]

Funny you should have a shot of Nichelle Nichols & Shatner in there: in Stephen Whitfield's book about "The Making of Star Trek", written in the late 60s, he talks about how difficult it was for the lighting people to get her skin tone right. It took twice as long to light her than the white actors but they adored her so they put in the extra time. They had to fight the film balance every step of the way to make her look good on-screen.

[naughtymonkey]

"Chocolate and Wood" - sounds like a 70s funk/ soul group.

[leifallmendinger]

This video is deceptive on a number of scores.


‘Dynamic range’ describes the ability of a film to record detail in both light and dark areas of an image. Both film and digital sensors have poorer dynamic range than the human retina– these are simply physical limitations of the medium. This is why dark people are difficult to photograph. The video states that film companies didn’t care about dynamic range because they were racist, but in fact improved dynamic range has been a holy grail they have long sought after. The racism accusation is based on an entirely false premise.

The video makers also suggest that the filmmakers did not care about reproducing browns accurately. The reality is that the red, green, and blue layers of the emulsion are layered, with the top layer being the most brilliant. This physical limitation demands that a film be balanced towards red, green, or blue. Kodachrome and Agfachrome favored red (and therefore browns). Ektachrome favored blue. While color film improved over time, it looks like the video makers confuse technical limitations with racism here as well.

The video makers present no evidence that film chemists ever considered race in their product development. Instead, they must be racists because they invented a medium with inherent technical limitations. (Even today, a good practice is to overexpose dark subjects somewhere between a third to a full stop.)

Wouldn’t it be more reasonable simply to conclude that film improved over time?

The video makers are also inaccurate as to the date color film was introduced: ‘If you developed color film between the 1940s and the 1990s...’ Agfachrome was introduced in 1932, Kodachrome in 1935. If they get something this simple wrong, what are we to conclude about the rest of the video?

[oro]

This video doesn't seem so controversial, whats the problem?

[midnightwatchman]

As a black man, it is true but is this really unfortunate. The people developing film technology were not black, I think we could forgive them for not thinking about all the possibilities that the technology has to cover. As software developer I have done it often not thinking of all the possible use of the technology or being locked into a particular prospective or world view that may actually excluded particular set of people, some of these were blind or hard of hearing but does it mean that I hated then. If you can prove conclusively that the persons that develop film technology sat around table said "we are going to exclude black people" then no this video is just circumstantial evidence. Half the time my voice recognition software does not recognize my accent does it mean the software developer hates me. plus to prevent this form ever happening maybe we need more black people developing this sort of technology that is the real solution not this thing white guilt foolish. who needs people feeling guilty about the past this is worthless to me. I want to interact with people of today not reminding people of how evil their ancestors were, totally useless and pointless

[FernandoTorrera]

The light is racist it doesn't bounce of darker skin colors as well making darker people less visible. You could say it's racist towards red heads and albinos like me who look like a white face with no features when taking a group pic on a sunny day. I'm like the ghost among the smiling faces in every hiking pic. :-p

[kirkdarling]

This is a myth. It's totally a myth. Color film science has never used Caucasian skin as the basis for emulsion formulation. Portraits weren't even the original market in the development of color film. Color film was developed initially for the nature and science markets, and they used (and still use) calibrated color patches to determine the accuracy of the color tones. Botanists and ornithologists were far more critical of color accuracy across the spectrum than portrait photographers.

Kodak created the so-called "Shirley" negative in the 1950s--20 years after their famous Kodachrome film was invented--because the US Congress broke up their retail consumer color printing monopoly. They were forced to give independent film processors all the information to process and print Kodak Kodacolor film, which included a test negative to calibrate their prints. The important portion of the negative was NOT the white woman in the picture (she was just there for "interest"). The important portions are the color and gray patches that can be read by a densitometer to make sure the numbers of the print matched specifications. I used a Shirley negative myself in the 1970s to do my own color printing (and I'm a black, btw).

Color film development never had anything to do Caucasion skin in particular. Companies were always trying to reproduce the entire spectrum satisfactorily.

[farmduck]

My guitar is racially biased. When Jimi Hendrix played a Fender Strat he sounded great but when I play one it sounds like crap.

[realAlexChoi]

As an Asian, I am just laughing at the comments.

[JamEngulfer]

Jeez, everyone here is trying so hard to get offended at this video.

Nowhere did they say that it was some racist conspiracy. All the video did was explain the history of it and how the process worked.

There is no real agenda in this film, no matter how much you want there to be.

[eggsD]

I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the ‘Is Microsoft’s Kinect Racist?’ at 4:01

[johnabbottphotography]

Do you believe that the first microphone manufacturer was biased against people with soft voices? That it was only created for people who shout?
As a photographer, the thing that I can't stand about this the most is that people are going to walk away with both an incorrect understanding of film... and an incorrect understanding of the history of film.
Film wasn't developed with one skin tone in mind anymore than microphones were developed so that we could hear just loud people. Just as it took a while to get microphones to the point where it could hear softer sounds, it took a while for us to get film to the point where there was detail in things that reflected less light... including people. Lorna Roth's study is horribly flawed, and every photographer who knows film is laughing/crying at this.