capturemag.com.au
[capture] sep_oct.19highway? And does the occasional post removal outweigh the huge benefits
that the platform otherwise offers artists to help grow and indeed support
their practice? “I think about quitting Instagram every day, but never do,
and keep posting,” says Templeton, offering instead some suggestions as to
how the platform might improve in terms of censorship. “It might be too
nuanced for the social media platforms to be the deciders [as to what is and
isn’t art]. They should just have a choice for the poster to put up a
disclaimer before viewing. If you decide to view, you can’t then flag it,” he
says, going on to cite perhaps the most talked about topic on social media
today: nipples. “Basically, censoring nipples at this point is ridiculous.
Penises and vaginas, I get. But the entire boobie excluding only one square
inch? It’s kind of stupid. The children can handle it, they already do.”
In chorus with Templeton is artist and photographer Savannah Spirit
whose practice as a photographer has frequently looked at the female form.
But rather than shunning the Instagram platform as would seem warranted
for a practitioner whose lens is often focused squarely on the female nipple,
Spirit has enacted a two-pronged approach of both refining her practice in
light of the parameters that Instagram has set and entering into a discourse
that might result in more precise censorship measures aimed to facilitate
artists in the digital realm. “I wish I could quit [Instagram], but it leaves me
no choice if I want to stay in the game,” says Spirit. “It’s difficult because
most of the art community is on there. But for me, censorship actually had
the opposite effect. These confinements helped me go to a new level with
my images, and I grew technically, aesthetically, and intellectually as an
artist. So, their censorship was to my benefit.” Despite this, Spirit
maintains that progress is still to be made on certain aspects of censorship
and echoes the sentiment put forth by Templeton that the emancipation of
the female nipple on social media is long overdue.
Taking place in a peaceful protest outside the
Instagram/Facebook offices in New York City on
2 June this year, Spirit was part of hundreds that
bore (almost) all as part of artist Spencer Tunick’s
and the National Coalition Against Censorship’s
effort. “If you are of age, there should be no
reason you can’t handle seeing a photograph or a
rendering of a naked body. At that point you
should know a naked body is not disgusting. It’s
natural and normal,” says Spirit. “When IG opens
up to the artistic nude, we won’t know until then
what kind of content will be allowed, and how it
will be monitored. Porn Hub may be able to get
away with a little bit more, but we won’t know until it happens. Isn’t that
what Warhol said? ‘Art is what you can get away with.’”2019
Whether impacting journalist’s ability for free speech and precise reporting,
or keeping the female nipple out of pixels across our devices’ screens,
censorship is evidently alive and well in photography in 2019. But as is
evident, in some spheres the omission of certain images is not only
necessary, but can mean the difference between life and death. While it is
certainly tempting to enter a philosophical dialogue that considers a more
black-and-white rendition of the argument for censorship or no censorship,
the reality in an age where print media is struggling to survive and where
we rely on robots for most of our digital curatorial processes anyway, is that
an entire spectrum of nuances, where the relevance of censorship is
infinitely varied, complicit, and responsible for how we consume images, is
in place. While the heavy hand of the Bangladeshi government might paint
Shahidul Alam’s predicament as a most nefarious example of censorship
today, the accumulation of photographs that you or I never saw because of
reasons not known to us surely presents a collection in the petabytes.... censorship is
evidently alive and
well in photographyin 2019.
CONTACTS
Matt Abbott http://www.matthewabbott.com.au
Alan Hill alanhill.com.au
Fiona Shields http://www.theguardian.com/profile/fiona-shields
Savannah Spirit savannahspirit.photography
Ed Templeton ed-templeton.combusiness censorship
©^
MATTABBOTTABOVE: A
refugee collapses
in a police
station shortly
after being
assaulted by
locals, Manus
Island, August,
2016.