Flickr Does Not Like The Human Body
The service from Yahoo censors all of the photo archive from a professional photographer because it showed pictures of nudity.
Fabio Bórquez discovered Flickr (the service to share pictures from Yahoo) in 2005 by chance and got hooked. “When I came to Europe I started from scratch and I saw it as another way to move my work”. Three years later, this professional Argentinean photographer was met with a big problem: to defend himself in a symposium organised by the German association of photographers (DGPh) and Flickr, where he has been banned showing images of naked women.
The battle of Bórquez against Flickr started in 2006. After a year as an active member in the community (more than 5000 contacts, thousands of daily visits, lots of comments about his photos) the access to his profile was restricted completely without communication from the staff of the service. His crime? Publishing inappropiate photos (artistic nudity). The threat? To delete his archive or disappear.
“It is madness”, assures Bórquez in a telephone conversation from Germany, “they can put up violent images and it doesn’t matter but if you see a breast or a nipple it is restricted. It is the limit when a photograph shows hair because it is inappropriate but if the model is shaved then its not”!
A restricted image implies that only those with marked access inside have the possibility of seeing these types of images. “Despite this, I still have 2500 daily visits” says Bórquez.
So he decided to initiate a “war of warfare” and send post to all of his contacts. A little later there was a bombardment of mail from the followers of this photographer and they tried to free his account. When it seemed that the problem had been solved, a new unilateral movement to place the account of Fabio Bórquez as moderate and marked the photograph as newborn restricted. According to his own page on Flickr, the restricted content are those that “you probably would not show to your mum and definitely not to children”.
Fabio Bórquez wrote in the forum and it was closed and deleted instantly. Finally it was vetoed in the forums and action was initiated in a collective protest under the title of Being Bórquez that consisted of 200 images in his parallel account for each user that should be created following the model: to insert his nickname between his name and surname( for example Fabio Aitor Bórquez). In one day 1200 users registered following this man.
Months later after the archive of Fabio Bórquez was deleted from Flickr, there are still various users that support the Argentinean.
Being blocked was the worse thing but now it has passed. Bórquez published his own blog with lots of pages and photos that have stayed on Flickr. Now instead of the photos is a revealing message: This photograph is not available. “I have paid for a service and they have messed up my work”.
Fabio Bórquez will talk at 2 .15pm in front of 600 people about the use of Flickr for professional photographers.
And what is he going to say?
“I will say that Flickr is excellent but it’s managed by idiots”
Despite Elpais.com insisting, Yahoo has not offered its version of the facts.
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