© Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin. Courtesy the artists and Galery TPW
Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light
29 April – 2 June 2013
National Billboard campaign, Canada
11 May – 8 June 2013
Gallery TPW, Toronto
* Presented in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light presents a national billboard campaign that depicts glamorous Caucasian women in high-contrast dress posed in front of neutral grey backgrounds. Collectively known as “Shirleys,” the portraits are culled from an archive of Kodak “norm reference cards,” historically used to calibrate skin tone in a photograph. French director Jean-Luc Godard made Kodak’s apparent predilection for white skin famous by refusing to use Kodak film on assignment in Mozambique in 1975. Kodak film, he insisted, was “racist.” Responding primarily to the confectionary and furniture industries’ complaints that they could not properly render dark chocolate or dark wood, Kodak chemists developed an emulsion that more accurately depicted darker colours: Gold Max, the first popular consumer film to address this problem, was initially described by Kodak as able “to photograph the details of a dark horse in low light.”
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Adrian Paci, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea (Center for Temporary Permanence) 2007. Video still. Courtesy kaufmann repetto, Milan and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich © Adrian Paci 2013
