You mention a bit about the latent social forces embedded within technological development and how that has related to skin tones and the technologies of color reproduction, so I figured I would share some references:
The Kodak “Shirley cards” and test shots are of course famous in the media theory world for how they baked notions of race and “standard” or “normal” conditions into the medium of photography. Not dissimilar from the various discussions around facial recognition from approximately 10 yr ago.
https://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/color-goes-electric
The Kodak “Shirley cards” and test shots are of course famous in the media theory world for how they baked notions of race and “standard” or “normal” conditions into the medium of photography. Not dissimilar from the various discussions around facial recognition from approximately 10 yr ago.