Capture Australia – September-October 2019

capturemag.com.au

[capture] sep_oct.19

This year, photographer and artist Ed Templeton was commissioned by
Vogue magazine to photograph couples kissing at the LA Pride Parade in
light of his previous work with the topic in his book, Teenage Kissers.
Photographing the event on his well-worn Leica rangefinder and 35mm
negatives, Templeton photographed “a wide array of genders and sexes and
combinations” all celebrating diversity in his home state of California. But
it wasn’t until his film was developed and images published that Templeton
was confronted with what he is calling “base homophobia and Instagram’s
algorithms” that took to denigrating his work. “The minute I posted them, I
noticed a dive in followers, maybe 500 people unfollowed me after seeing
two men kissing on their feed,” says Templeton. “That is homophobia, plain
and simple. If you are so affected by it that instead of just scrolling by it you
need to go through the steps of unfollowing me, you’re a homophobe.”
Following his initial posts of the content on this personal Instagram page,
the following day would see an explosion in the division of his followers as
Vogue made three posts from Templeton’s photo essay and linked to his
account directly. “Since they have 23 million followers, those photos got a
lot of exposure and my followers shot back up by 2000 or so,” says
Templeton. “The posts ended up on the [Instagram] explore page. Now I’m
getting super crazy anti-gay comments from around the world. The
comments on the Vogue post are a very dark look into homophobia and
religious zealotry.”
While it is important to consider in this context the idea that all users
of the Instagram platform are equally entitled to express their views
(whether homophobic or not), what is much more concerning is the form

of automated, techno-censorship that

Templeton was experiencing. He is convinced

that a combination of the sheer number of

flags his posts received from viewers and

algorithm-induced protocol was behind the

removal of his otherwise innocuous images.

“Instagram has billions of users and there’s no

way a human can monitor each flag, so if

enough people flag a post it gets removed by

default,” he says. “My problem with that is if

Instagram is claiming that it has progressive

values and supports the LBGTQ community during Pride Month, how is

it possible that a bunch of backward, religious zealots and homophobes

can successfully get posts taken down? Instagram is letting these people

make their policy for them by proxy.”

Outside of the Vogue/homophobia saga, Templeton’s case also raises a

number of questions about social media platforms and censorship more

generally as ever-increasing numbers of users turn to the Instagram

platform for an outlet for their photographs and other arts. While almost all

fine art photographic practitioners now have a story of their post being

removed from the platform, some have suggested that Instagram, as a

private company, has every right to remove whatever they want from their

servers. So, what happens when a privately owned platform grows so large

that almost the entire world’s art community comes to rely on it as a means

for dissemination and collaboration? Is it a case of Instagram’s way or the

Instagram is letting

these people make

their policy for

them by proxy.

Ed Templeton

business censorship

©^

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ABOVE: Rebel

soldiers patrol on

the outskirts of

Bentiu IDP

camp, South

Sudan. By

September

2014, between

40,000 and

50,000 people

lived in Bentiu’s

refugee/IDP

camp.