Photo Book with Photographs That Were Banned from Instagram

Prestel Publishing released a book that consists of images banned from Instagram. Curators and photographers Arvida Byström and Molly Soda gathered several hundred of such pictures into a book called Pics or It Didn’t Happen: Images Banned from Instagram. The works that were banned include images taken by photographers Petra Collins, Rupi Kaur, and Harley Weir.

“The female body is constantly policed – why would Instagram be any different?” Molly Soda asks in her interview to Dazed.

Instagram’s rules prohibit to publish photographs that contain violence, naked or partially naked body, as well as pornography. Photographs that discriminate other people or are promoting hate or enmity. Some of the photographs that were included in the book are clearly against the rules — these are mostly photographs that contain nudity. At the same time, there seems to be no apparent reason for blocking other images.