The following short video by Vox shows how white skin has always been the norm in photography. Black people didn’t start to look good on film until in the 1970s furniture makers complained to Kodak that their film didn’t render the difference between dark and light grained wood, and chocolate companies were upset that you couldn’t see the difference between dark and light chocolate.
These biases have resurfaced (or more likely, continued) in digital photography, with the default settings not working particularly well for people with a dark skin color. Working with a set of professional image-makers, Google has finally taken steps to address this problem within their computational photo algorithms:
In the Guardian, Black photographers welcome Google’s initiative, but also make it clear that a technological fix will not end racial bias in photography.
See: Skin in the frame: black photographers welcome Google initiative at The Guardian.