(Last Updated On May 26, 2022)
The following photo, Burnt by the Sun by Natalia Kharitonova, won Third Prize in a jury selection at the New York Center of Photographic Art last summer. It was recently censored by Instagram shortly after it was posted. In private emails from Instagram, the artist was advised that it was necessary to cover up the breasts of children, and therefore posting it was “unethical”. Kharitonova responded that, “It’s not ethical for me to just draw triangles on children …” Of course, Instagram is a private company and so little can be done about it at the moment. For the time being, it does still appear on Facebook, but who knows how long it will be able to remain there.
Natalia Kharitonova – Burnt by the Sun (2018)
Russians have no problems with kids or teens nude.
Some photographers are doing a good work as NIKITA X (On Flickr).
Great post Ron. I honestly consider myself to be a little more in favor of censorship than probably most on this site; however, Instagram seems to be falling into the category of paranoia here.
A further observation:
There is a Russian movie entitled “Burnt by the Sun”
which contains a scene of a topless little girl. I wonder if it was merely a coincidence,
or whether possibly the title of this photograph was inspired by the title of the movie.
Not everything revolves around little girls. The expression was used during the Stalin era. The danger of being close to or even being known by Stalin is that there was the opportunity of great wealth or power, but one misstep and it was curtains! ‘Burnt by the Sun’ was coined to refer to this Icarus factor when dealing with Stalin. This state of affairs was explained in the Burnt by the Sun commentary.
When today I was hearing how Trump is turning against so many of his close associates, this comment on this post suddenly popped into my mind. It looks like right now, being close to Trump is a lot like being close to Stalin once was.
There are parallels and you are not the first to refer to the President as a fascist. And when using the word “fascist” most people only associate it with German Nazism. A more intelligent definition has been offered by the late Ayn Rand which is what I mean when I use the word. -Ron
Children don’t have breasts! Talk about looking for something that’s not even there.
I think that this picture is beautiful, and that the demand for its censorship
was idiotic.
Realistically speaking, “breasts of children” is a contradiction in terms, even if it could be argued that it is biologically valid.