Photography is not just a system of calibrating light, but a technology of subjective decisions. Light skin became the chemical baseline for film technology, fulfilling the needs of its target dominant market. It has translated into the color-balancing of digital technology. The result was film emulsion technology that still carried over the social bias of earlier photographic conventions. It took complaints from corporate furniture and chocolate manufacturers in the 1960s and 1970s for Kodak to start to fix color photography’s bias.

Source: New York Times April 25, 2019 07:52 UTC