Last year, I read a series of items in New Scientist about the way that various types of racial discrimination are being researched. Why do black people have worse medical outcomes, educational outcomes? It’s not all easy material to read, but it is compelling – and it suggests to me that there are likely to be many other ways in which unintended bias occurs in this world.
More recently, Sajid Javid (for non-UK readers, he's the Secretary of State for Health here) has ordered a review of bias in medical devices, following a report that oximeters – those little things that clip onto your finger when you are in hospital – can overstate blood oxygen levels in ethnic minority patients. There are some anomalies in treatment regimes, as well that are apparently not based on scientific data.
I think I first noticed this a few years ago, when I was photographing a model called Aston. We talked about the results, and she said that a lot of photographers edited her pictures to lighten her skin. That struck me as heinous, given the lovely brown colour… Editing software tends to slim a broad face, as well.
We live in a world where many, many women buy the idea that they should have the looks of a plastic-surgery victim… Big boobs, big bottom, big lips – in the conventional and ugly trout pout. This is happening to women in all ethnic groups, but it doesn’t happen equally. For black women, there’s pressure to straighten hair and lighten complexions, and that doesn’t happen to pale, straight-haired people. Some singers seem to pale significantly as they become more famous.
I’ve said before that the thing about photographing many different people is that each person has their own beauty: when you are paying someone to be photographed, why should you then work hard to change their appearance?
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