Yeah even the paper cited notes that it's a technical challenge to make multiple races in the same shot look good using either film or video cameras, and so in

Yeah even the paper cited notes that it's a technical challenge to make multiple races in the same shot look good using either film or video cameras, and so in the past things were just optimized for the predominant racial category in the largest markets they sold to. But at the same time, they were always improving their ability to capture more. Kodak created different emulsion properties for the Asian/Japanese market since they weren't white, consistently improved the ability of their films to capture contrast and detail, and created test cards that featured multiple racial groups in one image. Obviously Fuji was not "optimizing for whiteness," since they uh, weren't white. Well, not exactly true. The paper mentions that there are widespread cross-cultural beauty preferences for lightness. Kodak improved their film to capture multiple races, and created test cards for multiple races. Imagine you're making film and you can capture 85-90% of people within the existing scope of technology. You do that and you sell it, and you work on improving it. There was a ton of interesting history and information in the paper, but I didn't even think it totally supported their own thesis, I kind of thought it worked against it. Film and video weren't "optimized for whiteness" they were optimized for markets and huge parts of those markets weren't even white, so they optimized for non-white in those markets. They wanted to sell more, so they improved their film by spending time and money on technical innovation. These things aren't free, early cameras made everybody look like shit. They got better and still are. edit: here's the paper: http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2196 http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2196 And there was racism happening, I am not denying that, but it was overstated imo.