E-Photo
Issue #196  3/17/2013
 
Facebook Censors Musée du Jeu de Paume

The Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris is exhibiting the work of French photographer Laure Albin-Guillot, now through May 12th. The museum recently published a photograph by Albin-Guillot on its Facebook page to promote the exhibition. The problem was that the photograph that was chosen was a female nude. This image was immediately censored by Facebook.

The following statement could be found on the museum's Facebook page: "On Friday, the account of Jeu de Paume was blocked for 24 hours after Facebook's decision, considering this photograph to be contrary to 'Facebook Community Standards.' We had already committed other offences in the past, publishing nudes by Willy Ronis and Manuel Alvarez Bravo. By the next warning from Facebook, our account will be permanently closed down. So we will not publish nudes in the future, even though we believe that they have a high artistic value and that there is nothing pornographic about these photographs, which are in accordance with 'the right to publish contents of a personal nature.'"

Along with eBay, Facebook has repeatedly censored nudes on its site, even those from other prestigious museums, such as the Gerhard Richter painting of a nude that appeared on the Centre George Pompidou's page last July.

In my opinion, this prudish attitude is nothing but censorship by an entity that should be regulated for its own destruction of personal privacy.