Censorship and Art

Rules and regulations inhibit creativity and poison expression in art.

Recently I tried to submit some sex worker photographs (face shots) to a magazine my camera club belongs to. The magazine is run by a group called CAPA. I was told the photos could not be published because the magazine was G-RATED. I am not sure what is x-rated about a persons face but thats was what I was told by the editor of the magazine.

The rational given by members of my club was that the editor was right because they have to cater to the members of the magazine, they have to fit into their target groups views. Is that not the exact opposite definition of art that we should all strive for? Should not the CAPA magazine be leading us, getting us to think in new and creative ways. Instead of fitting us into what is expected and safe.

Should not art strive to challenge and push us in new directions? Should organizations like the CAPA magazine not try to lead by example and get its members to work and think in new ways? In 25 years will this organization still be printing the exact same work it printed 25 years ago? There is more to art than pretty flower pictures, pretty sunset pictures. How many more frickin red canoes in a mountain lake can we possibly look at?

When you put in rules and regulations and you endorse the same trite images over and over and over again your not expanding your members creativity but instead limiting it and destroying it. Even more pernicious your misleading your members, your sort of giving them a false sense of achievement by publishing work that has at best been seen in very similar forms thousands of times before. Originality? What's that?

We should not worry about getting someone angry or pushing the envelope. Art is about getting people emotionally involved, getting them to think and look at the world in new ways, getting them to see and feel things they've never seen and felt before. Organizations like CAPA should try to push their artists in new directions instead of giving them a platform to do what has been done before.

Rules, regulations and censorship destroy an artists attempt to get the viewer out of his comfortable box and see the world in a new way. Rules, regulations and censorship tie the artists hands and stifle their creativity and their ability to express themselves.

I think back 2 entries in this blog. Based on the requirements of CAPA magazines G-Rated policy one of the greatest photographs ever created "Tomeko in Her Bath" would not be shown! I can just hear the editor now:

"Sorry Gene we only do G-Rated work here, we cannot publish your photograph. But if you have a nice pretty old barn in a nice pretty field next to some nice pretty flowers, your in!"

That is just plain F-cked up!