KODAK KOLOR KARDS

In the 1950's, Color Cards were created to register skin tones and adjust them to look good on screen.Unfortunately, the color cards only registered white skin tones which created one standard of beauty – white beauty. These color cards weren’t changed until years later, when furniture companies were dissatisfied about the coloring of their dark brown furniture. They felt that the lighting didn’t optimize the beauty of the wood. Until then, brown skinned people suffered the same unflattering fate as the dark brown furniture.The photos in this series are somewhat abstract, intentionally hiding parts of the subject's features, and challenging standard images of beauty in film and photography. Sadly, that abstraction mirrors the way in which African Americans are unseen and misrepresented in media. I believe showing Black people in naturally beautiful and meaningful ways can change perceptions and accentuate human commonalities versus our differences.