.ART

Dragana Jurisic is an acclaimed photographer based in Dublin. Her Instagram, which has amassed close to 9,000 followers, was temporarily shut down after she posted a revealing photo of herself.

This is yet another example of the ongoing battle between the social media giants and artists around the world regarding the ad hoc application of their policies on nudity, which occasionally border upon absurd – like the recent categorization of a 30,000-year-old nude statue as “pornographic”. At the same time, Dragana’s photo doesn’t look more revealing than the images that countless celebrities have posted without – including this photo of Kim Kardashian that didn’t cause any outrage from the social network’s censors.

 Jurisic, amongst others (including renowned photography critic, Sean O’Hagan), have noted the double standards when it comes to the application of the nudity policy. Jurisic queries whether this incident “boils down to female nipples and hair”.

The offending photo contains a naked model sitting in a brown and was published with a leaf covering her breasts. The image has accumulated over 650 likes to date. The photo was also uploaded to Facebook and, again, was blocked and removed. The author was not given any warning or explanation from either site in advance of the action taken by them.

Dragana has since been advised that her account was shut down due to “repeated nudity” and Instagram has reinstated Jurisic’s account. However, the artist is mourning the loss of dates, times, notes, and discussions regarding approximately 3,000 lost posts which Instagram has failed to reinstate.