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Fragment of a digitized portrait of Swedish model Lena Forsen, depicted on the Playboy centerfold in November 1972, has been widely used in scientific work to test and illustrate image processing algorithms.
Last week, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Computer Society announced that, effective April 1, it will no longer accept documentation that uses the “Lenna” image.
“In accordance with the IEEE Statement on Diversity, and in deference to the wishes of the subject of the image, Lena Forsen, we will no longer accept papers containing images of Lenna,” wrote the vice president of technical and conference activities at the Computer Society IEEE Terry Benzel.
An uncropped version of the test image first appeared as a centerfold in the December 1972 issue of Playboy magazine, and since June 1973, when researchers at the University of Southern California scanned a fragment of a poster to illustrate one of the articles, it began to be used as a standard picture on which all kinds of tests were tested and practiced. image correction techniques, new processing algorithms were honed, etc.
Lenna's original test image is a cropped portion of a 1972 Playboy poster.
Despite the obvious violation of copyright, Playboy did not go to court. In 1997, Forsen was invited to the 50th annual conference of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, where she signed autographs for fans.
“They must be so tired of me… Looking at the same picture for years,” Lena joked then.
As Ars Technica notes, the shot, which shows Forsen's face and bare shoulder wearing a hat with a purple feather, was ideal for testing imaging systems in years past due to its high contrast and variety of detail. At the same time, the use of a sexy photo of a woman by men in the computing field has been criticized for decades – women in the field of science believed that the photo “objectified women and created an academic climate in which they did not feel fully welcome.”
In 2018, the use of Lena’s photograph for articles was banned by Nature magazine.
Lena Foster in the documentary Losing Lena
The fashion model herself said in an interview in 2019 that she was proud of her photo, but regretted that she received little money for it. Lena has since changed her mind and promoted the removal of the photo in the documentary Losing Lena.
“I left the modeling business a long time ago. The time has come for me to leave science too.”
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