racism

Racists ‘Zoombomb’ Discussion Celebrating Black Photographers

On February 26, 2021, Scopio hosted a public panel for Black History Month featuring Black photographers and Black-owned businesses. Halfway through the panel, a group of anonymous users disrupted the event and bombarded the chat and audio feed with a torrent of racist and hate-speech-filled language.

This New Community of Black Women Photographers Wants to Help the Industry Fix Its Diversity Problem

In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the world-wide reckoning with systemic racism that his death inspired, the photo industry has been taking a long hard look at its own issues with diversity and inclusion. Black Women Photographers—a new global community and database of Black women creatives—is both the result of, and an answer to, this long-overdue soul-searching.

Nikon Dropped the Term ‘Slave’ 20 Years Ago Due to ‘Negative Context’

Last week, Canon confirmed that they had stopped using the contentious terms 'master' and 'slave' in their flashes and triggers three years ago, but it looks like Nikon beat them to the bunch... by a lot. In a new statement, Nikon claims they stopped using the term "slave" in the early 2000s because of "the term's negative context."

Facing Xenophobia as a Photographer in the US

With years of experience, I have learned how to handle most daily situations encountered as a photographer. With the emergence of social media, people can be very picky about photos and privacy. I understand.

How Color Film was Originally Biased Toward White People

Vox has published a short 5-minute video that tells the story of how early film stocks in photography were designed with light skin as the ideal skin standard, and therefore sometimes had problems rendering darker skins -- especially in photos that showed both darker and lighter complexions.

Google Apologizes After Photos App Autotags Black People as ‘Gorillas’

Flickr sparked some controversy back in May after it was discovered that the service's new autotagging feature was prone to mislabeling black people as "apes." It looks like Google Photos developers didn't learn from Flickr's embarrassing misstep: a Google developer is apologizing after it was found that Google's Photos app misidentifies photos of black people as "gorillas."

Photography, Authority and Race

I am troubled by what I have seen.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed terrible, on-going episodes within our borders through photos and video that speak volumes about the tragedy of race. Racism is as old as human history, and there is a long, rich history of capturing race conflicts in the US by photographers like Charles Moore, Bruce Davidson, Gordon Parks and others.

But in this post 9/11 world, the balance of power has shifted towards authority -- militarized officers outfitted with high-powered machine guns and body armor straight out of central casting for a Michael Bay film who seemingly police differently depending on the color of your skin.

Exhibition Explores Racism in Early Color Photography

One would hope that the medium of photography was immune to racial prejudice, but an exhibit by London-based artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin shows that this was not always the case. The artists' exhibit, on display at Johannesburg's Goodman Gallery, explores the marks that racism left on early color photography.

Using film designed to capture white faces and a camera that became infamous for helping further apartheid in South Africa, Broomberg and Chanarin took photos of beautiful South African flora -- putting the once-racial implements to better use.