Standard Digital Edition

Tamara account in Instagram gay ‘censorship’ row

Robert Dex Arts Correspondent

INSTAGRAM has apologised to former IT girl Tamara Beckwith after it temporarily closed an account belonging to her photography gallery.

The TV presenter and entrepreneur, below, set up the Little Black Gallery in Chelsea in 2008 and runs it with Ghislain Pascal, putting on exhibitions, publishing books and selling photography.

Their BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Instagram account, which promotes gay and queer photography and represents photographers in countries where gay rights are repressed,was taken down two days ago without warning by the social media giant. The move prompted claims of censorship but the account has now been restored afterwhat the company said was “a mistake”.

In a message today, Instagram apologised for “any inconvenience” and said it had been “reactivated”. Pascal said the account, which was first set up two years ago, regularly suffered from having individual images taken down but this was the first time the entire account had been disabled. It includes work by more than 65 photographers from 30 countries, including places where gay rights are virtually non-existent, and Pascal said Instagram was a vital tool to reach people around the world.

He said: “We are not dealing in pornography. We are a fine art photography gallery and on this particular platform there is some male nudity but we never put anything on that would be full nudity. We know what the rules are, just as we would never put full female nudity on our other accounts.” He said it was “frustrating” dealing with the online giant as it never explained its decisions. He said: “We have almost 15,000 followers on there so that is a significant marketing tool for us. This is a tool that’s very useful to photographers, artists and galleries. It’s very difficult to get anything to do with queer or gay photography in any media around the world so Instagram is vital.”

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