Sepia

In a recent series of prints and paintings, Jeremy Okai Davis reevaluates archival sources relating to Black American culture, such as Jet and Sepia magazines from the 1950s–1970s. Here, Davis explores racial bias through the history of Shirley Cards—a system developed by Kodak to color-correct skin tones during film processing. This process was biased toward white skin so photos of subjects with very dark and very light skin in the same shot would come out either under or over-exposed. Below this Black model in Sepia, Davis inserts a color calibration tool of his own that includes the darker skin tones that the Shirley Card failed to accommodate.