Instagram has a strict no nudity policy and when this rule is broken the image is taken down and sometimes the Instagram account is deleted. This can mean the loss of a huge archive of dated photographs, spanning decades of work, used to promote and generate paid work. Different artists are responding to this policy in their own way.
The policy was amended to allow nudity in art and sculptures and allow breasts when actively breast feeding, and when showing post-mastectomy scarring.
Ryan McGinely had posted many nude pictures to Instagram but had used well placed fig leaves and emojis to abide by the no nudity rule. However, his account was closed down seemingly because of a photo caption reading ‘McGinely’s dog is named “Dick”’. He lost over a hundred of his images and losing his account he said felt:
For artists like 24-year-old British photographer Fia Yaqub, her work focuses on the relationship between the human body and its surroundings, and most of her work will feature nudity. She describes the difficulty she encountered when she broke the nudity policy on Instagram. She was signed out of the app and her login details no longer worked. She received a message saying you have broken the community guidelines in one of three ways: by posting content involving nudity, sexual harassment, or bullying. She was not able to recover her images. When she tried to open another account she was not able to, not even with a different email address. She had to use a second email address and her friend’s phone.
Similar to many artists, Yaqub relies on social media to get her art out there. Nick Knight found her work on social media and gave her paid work on ShowStudio. It is important that artists know how to navigate Instagram’s nudity policy, they need the platform to show their work. For Yaqub Instagram was a hard drive of all her images and a date stamped archive of her work.
In 2014, Grace Goddington, the then Creative Director of Vogue, was promoting a charity auction called ‘No Clothes’ coordinated with Paddle8. She posted a cartoon of herself wearing nothing but sun glasses and high heels. Instagram disabled her account citing nudity as the issue.
Photos of nipples are a common issue for account shutdowns. In the guidelines Instagram prohibits “some photos of female nipples”. What do they mean when they say ‘some’, which specifically are allowed and not allowed? Why female nipples? Why are male nipples allowed and female nipples banned? The censorship is there to protect children. Artist Alexandra Marzella, argues it is futile to try to protect children and we should not censor anything.
Former Neighbours star, 26 year-old Caitlin Stasey is taking a stance against Instagram’s no nudity policy by posting nude images of her breasts and bum on Instagram. The images get taken down, but she just puts more nude photos up, often with a defiant caption such as “Keep trying me, ‘gram’”. Stasey has incited many different reactions to her feminist stance.
The approach that Instagram takes in terms of deleting accounts and cancelling login access without warning is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. On top of this, people are riled about loss of photo archives, and often portfolios of work. Unfortunately, Instagram is not willing to decipher between porn and artistic photographs of nudity. The grey area is already huge and people are confused about what is and is not permitted. This is resulting is a lot of surprise shut down of accounts, as well as caution and walking on eggshells to ensure one does not get closed down.