How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin Color
23rd July 2015
A Voice of the Crust makes its bid for Moral Superiority in an Identity Politics world.
Color film was invented quite a bit later. The principle was basically the same: take impressions of different wavelengths of light as separate photographs, and combine them into a full-color photo. The difference was they were able to take these “separate” photos in the different layers of chemicals on the same square of film; essentially a single photograph, and a single exposure (press-of-the-button.)
The proportion of the different colors in the photo — the photo’s color balance — was partially determined by the concentrations of chemicals in the film; and partially by the various chemicals used in processing the film and printing from it. This underwent a lot of fine-tuning. For example: the first color film was two-color, i.e. only in red and green. In the US, where this technology was being pioneered, most of this fine-tuning was done by affluent white men. And, as it turns out, the race of these men had implications: they were operating under a very particular assumption about whom and what their product was meant to capture.
Can’t get much more ‘progressive’ in tone than that.