Presence of Color: Jeremy Okai Davis

Through a critical reimagining of Kodak's mid-20th-century "Shirley" cards, reinterpretations of Black portraiture, and the inclusion of archival images from Jet and Hue magazines, Davis challenges the historical dominance of whiteness in visual culture.

Kodak's original "Shirley" card was used to balance color in film, centering the white woman as the “normal” in lighting and shadow exposure, and embedding whiteness into the technical framework of photograph printing. The result was not merely aesthetic imbalance; it institutionalized racial hierarchy within visual systems, often rendering darker skin tones underexposed or flattened.

By creating "Black Shirley cards," Davis performs both critique and reclamation. He positions Black skin tones as the standard of calibration, symbolically and materially re-centering Blackness within the framework of visual and cultural worth. In his work, calibration becomes a metaphor for social significance—an invitation to reset the scale by which visibility and importance are measured.

Presence of Color is a meditation on visibility and value. Through technological critique, cultural reclamation, and the elevation of Black portraiture, Jeremy Okai Davis transforms the camera from an instrument of exclusion into a tool of affirmation.