Reframing the Greatness of Black

Insight

Film technology wasn’t developed to capture all skin tones.

For many years, white skin has been used as the standard to calibrate colours in photography using Shirley Cards. This made it difficult for Black skin tones to be portrayed with faithfulness, instead appearing either blurred, flat or shaded in photographic prints. This pattern has continued to be repeated in technologies and algorithms until today.

Two women in brown clothing sit indoors with serious expressions; one is in sharp focus while the other is blurred in the foreground. A red ladder and brown background are visible behind them.

The Shirley Card legacy.

Originally, the Shirley Card was a photo of a white woman with colour references, light exposure and density, which photographers and designers used to balance photographic printing machines to a standard considered normal, aiming to meet the needs of the dominant target market at the time. In 1990, multiracial Shirley Cards were introduced to coincide with cameras capable of processing light and dark skin tones at the same time. However, these models still had a fair complexion and the updated cards were never widely adopted because they coincided with the emergence of digital photography.

A woman with brown hair, wearing an off-shoulder white garment, smiles at the camera. She is positioned next to a grayscale color strip, with a row of colored squares at the bottom of the image.

A woman with braided hair, wearing a rust-colored blazer and gold jewelry, poses against a brown backdrop. A palette of various brown and tan shades appears to the right and below her portrait.

Bias in machine learning algorithms.

Today, most AI tools used for image editing have been trained to see human faces using huge digital image libraries that contain bias. Studies have shown that it is challenging to identify or eliminate these biases. The result of their use is that real people are misrepresented or excluded, just as Shirley Cards were designed to do.

A stylish woman with an intricate, spiky braided hairstyle sits on a sofa, wearing a brown leather shirt, pearl necklace, and two gloves—one white, one tan—against a brown background with neutral-toned cushions.

Idea

Bringing new perspectives.

The rgblack.org platform contains new calibration cards designed for diverse skin types, plus information on the principles of lighting, beauty, colourimetry and more.

For the launch photographer and director Juh Almeida from Pródigo Films created a film that revisits Shirley Cards with a Black look and a proposal for reflection that precedes the click of a camera, while also showing the new calibration cards being recreated.

Impact

More inclusive forms of representation.

Media coverage on the launch of RGBlack has created debate around racial bias present in the culture and technologies of the audio visual industry, and puts further emphasis on the importance of diverse perspectives.

rgblack.org