Referring to the Past to Explore the Present

From the 1940s, the industry standard for colour correction was the Shirley Card, invented by Kodak in North America. It functioned as the conventional standard for the colour balancing of still photographs. The card was named after the first model used for the colour balancing process, and it portrayed a white woman as the only subject, surrounded by a chart of achromatic, primary, and secondary colours.

If the technological standard considered for everyone is only based on specific biases, the result will suit the part of the population that reflects those characteristics, but it eventually fails the ones that aren’t. I took these photographs during my research phase of Feeling No - Pain to explore the feelings and confusion I had regarding this discovery.

Click here to see the Shirley Card.