‘All visions and stories and narratives come from bias.’ – Marcus Winter
What are we as a culture if not a collection of widely understood images and narratives? After Marcus Winter’s lecture on his artistic practise of telling stories with sand, I wanted to understand more artistic technologies and how are cultural narratives are formed through them. Some of the most poignant ways to connect with the world is through the complex intersection of art and technology, in all its forms. The blend of technology and art throughout history has significantly impacted how people’s cultural narratives are perceived in a wider world context. If there’s one character that’s hidden in the shadows of this complex history, it’s Kodak.
An early example of Kodak’s Shirley cards, clearly featuring only white skin tones.
The modern world rapidly changed after the 1940s/ 50s technology around camera and film use. Kodak had become a success by the end of the 1940s by transitioning their market to the general public (*1). Owning a film camera became a popular and accessible tool for many. By 1954, the US government decided to break up Kodak developing film technology (*2). New technology was needed to support this transition into the public domain. The Shirley Card was used to develop colour-film photography as a reference to calibrate colours.
The original reference image was of a Kodak employee called ‘Shirley Page’ and became the basis image of developing coloured-images for decades to come (*3). It’s important to note that originally all Shirley Cards featured only a white woman. While this wasn’t necessarily an intentional choice by Kodak to exclude non-white skin tones (*4), this casual ignorance had many consequences of how people of colour were perceived by the world for decades. The Shirley card centred white skin as default, which made the images (and therefore the depictions of the lives of people of colour) were misrepresented and unfaithful to the true tone of their skin. While each person is more than their skin tone and facial features, it’s integral to the holistic understanding of a person and their history to see their skin and features as a part of who they are.
The lack of skin tone variation in Shirley Cards often made black people looked like human figures without distinguishing features.
By the 1970s, nearly twenty years since the first Shirley Card was released, there was a shift in colour developing technology in film. Companies that produced products such as wooden furniture and chocolate were noticing a lack of clarity and colour consistency in their products in print advertising (*5). To keep up with demand, Kodak later produced more default colours of brown and red for film developers. In turn, there was a visible improvement in the clarity and tone consistency of photographs with people of colour in it.
One of first Kodak’s Multiracial Shirley card from 1995
By 1995, Kodak released it’s first multi-cultural Shirley Card (*6). While a welcome addition to film printing technology, the new card was also considered as more of a performative stunt rather than genuinely promotion of breaking down technological bias to whiteness. The structure of around centring whiteness in technology and art runs deep and needs addressing on many levels. It’s going to take difficult conversations and dramatic shifts of focus to move racism out of the shadows and into the centre frame to address its harms.
Bibliography
1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVrmFgvEnAA
2. Barco, M. (2014, November 13). How Kodak’s Shirley Cards Set Photography’s Skin-Tone Standard. https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard
4. Barco, M. (2014, November 13). How Kodak’s Shirley Cards Set Photography’s Skin-Tone Standard. https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d16LNHIEJzs
6. https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias
