'Racism' of early colour photography explored in art exhibition

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Good old Grauniad, as ever, inventing a controversy out of a silly statement.

"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

 

[Roger Hicks]

Never mind the number of black faces, racism, or anything else. Consider the simple truth that most Caucasian skin is a light mid-tone (easy to represent given ASA/ISO negative film speed definitions) while many 'black' skins are dark mid-tones (some are darker) and correspondingly require more exposure to bring them somewhere near a mid-tone. As no film speed criterion is based on skin tones, all these allegations sounds a bit contrived to me. In other words, yes, this is a post-event re-interpretation of the technology limitations of the time, the Guradian at its wosrt.

Cheers,

R.

 

[nikonosguy]

if you go looking for a boogieman, you'll find it anywhere... mostly, it's fiction.

 

[DamenS]

In other words, yes, this is a post-event re-interpretation of the technology limitations of the time, the Guradian at its wosrt.

Cheers,

R.

It's sounding a little as though "The Guardian" at its worst might, unfortunately, be remarkably similar to "The Guardian" at its best ... 🙂

 

[Spicy]

if you go looking for a boogieman, you'll find it anywhere... mostly, it's fiction.

i like this.

 

[Spanik]

Using WASTE to document rare rituals is at the very best a meta-ritual of its own - more likely it is idiocy.

Couldn't say it better. Very likely the first time they handled film as well.

 

[xayraa33]

Geez, everything is racist these last forty years.

The most overused word that ever was.

In the same silly vain:

I had to shovel a lot of snow today and my back is sore.

Snow is way whiter than I am therefore snow is racist for making me work to clear it and giving me a sore back in the process.🙂

 

[x-ray]

Several years ago I had samPles of both Fiji and Kodak films formulated for different makets. These were for Asia. My commercial kodak rep wanted one of both samples and I swapped them for some E6 film. He told me Kodak formulate their film to make Asian skin look more western. Kodak had done studies and determined the Asian market wanted to look more western. Agfa formulated their chromed to be warmed with fair European skin as well. These weren't dramatic reformulations but did change skin tones to what was considered at the time to be the ideal

 

[Michael Markey]

It's sounding a little as though "The Guardian" at its worst might, unfortunately, be remarkably similar to "The Guardian" at its best ... 🙂

I`ve never been able to tell the difference ....is there one 🙂

 

[Jamie123]

This is quite silly. We all know that racism was prevalent in most societies in some way or another throughout most of the 20th century and I'm sure everyone is aware that there is still a lot of racism in the world today. Taking something from the 1920s and linking it to racism is like taking something from the Vatican and linking it to Catholicism. Did Kodak's engineers have white people in mind when they adjusted the emulsions for skin tones? Pretty likely. I think it's safe to assume that there also weren't many black people featured in Kodak ads from that time and I'm sure there weren't any black people in executive positions in the company.

I wonder what great discovery they're going to come up with next. Sexist vacuum cleaners from the 1940s anyone?

 

[Photo_Smith]

Taken in the 1960's is this proof that black and white skin can't be rendered on Kodak film?

 

[benlees]

I did wonder why, as a child as I looked around my multicultural classroom, the slightly off pink pencil crayon was called "skin tone". I suppose on the inside we are a a shade of pink, but I don't think that is what corp. HQ was thinking of.

 

[bobbyrab]

I did wonder why, as a child as I looked around my multicultural classroom, the slightly off pink pencil crayon was called "skin tone". I suppose on the inside we are a a shade of pink, but I don't think that is what corp. HQ was thinking of.

Most Elastoplasts are still caucasian in colour, as a white person it never even occurred to me that having them in a caucasian skin colour was in any way odd, but they date back to a time when the market they served was 99% white so traditionally we expect them to be that colour.

 

[finguanzo]

Most Elastoplasts are still caucasian in colour, as a white person it never even occurred to me that having them in a caucasian skin colour was in any way odd, but they date back to a time when the market they served was 99% white so traditionally we expect them to be that colour.

I had to look up what an Elastoplast was.. LOL 🙂

 

[Sparrow]

Most Elastoplasts are still caucasian in colour, as a white person it never even occurred to me that having them in a caucasian skin colour was in any way odd, but they date back to a time when the market they served was 99% white so traditionally we expect them to be that colour.

One sees a lot of blue Elastoplasts in restaurants these days ... are their kitchens staffed mostly with Smurfs now?

 

[tunalegs]

Taken in the 1960's is this proof that black and white skin can't be rendered on Kodak film?

I have some Kodachrome slides from the late 1940s taken in east Asia and everybody looks fine in them too. 😕

 

[Godfrey]

I dunno. I've been taking pictures of black, white, tan, brown and even a couple of green people for a bazillion years. Never noticed that I needed to do anything other than arrange to get proper exposure and then render the image properly once I had the negatives.

Much ado about nothing at all.

G

 

[TXForester]

It is simple. Two morons use expired film to make a point about film that was intended to be shot years ago. Then based on their poor results they draw conclusions which have little to do with the state of film technology back then.

It is a fine example of the "news" industry spewing bovine feces to make a buck. Idiots chasing the almighty dollar (is it pound or euro in case of the guadian? ).

 

[bojanfurst]

At the risk of beating a dead horse here. This article bugged me because I thought there is a kernel of truth somewhere in there. The two idiots using film that expired 30 years ago are obviously just that – idiots. The fact that they felt they can use somebody else's cultural practices as a fodder for their little failed art experiment tells you everything you need to know about them.

I think what bothered me about the article was a nagging suspicion that making an argument that film as a technology was inherently racist may not be that far fetched.

It so happened that my wife came home this afternoon from a short trip visiting her family out West and brought me Fred Herzog's book "Fred Herzog Photographs" which sort of put that nagging suspicion to rest for me. There is a photo in that book called "Jackpot" clearly showing that film, at least in 1961 and well before the expired rolls two nitwits used, was more than capable of recording various skin tones. There is an argument to be made that racism was part of much of the photographic practice, but that should be levelled against individual photographers/editors/publications. Clearly, if one wanted to photograph people, film was not an obstacle to do so respectfully.

P.S. I believe forum rules don't approve of posting other people's photos (as it should be) so I included the links for the curious 🙂

 

[Mystyler]

Lucky that Fuji stuck one up all us evil white photographers with Velvia then, isn't it?