"The Quiet Racism of Instagram Filters"

"In the 1950s, for example, Kodak measured and calibrated skin tones in still photography using a reference card featuring "Shirley," a white model dressed in high-contrast clothing... Only when the candy and furniture industries began complaining that they couldn't accurately shoot dark chocolate and brown wood furniture did Kodak start to improve its technology...

most American film stocks were not built by or made for people of color, so what does this mean for Instagram, which prides itself on allowing its users to filter photos so that they look like they were taken from a Polaroid or Kodak?...

To test this theory, I decided to gather a few models of various ethnicities to see how the filters affected their skin tones and inevitably changed their appearances."
http://www.racked.com/2015/7/7/8906343/instagram-racism

Related: “Teaching The Camera To See My Skin”