Blurb and Freedom of Art
Yesterday, May 13 Blurb took away a photo book of Anastasya Chernyavskaya styyuuush from the site.
This is wonderful book is about maternity, family and herself. This book is about love, art and beauty. Yes this book has a lot of nude images picturing Nastya herself and her daughters. The book was on a Blurb site more than a month and Nastya did not get any complaints either about context or quality of the photographs.
Blurb’s subcontractor refused to print this book because of the nude children pictures.
This news and behavior of Blurb shocked me. Blurb as a publisher can and should have a policy which clear states what are they publishing and what not. Like any other publishing house they can refuse to publish some books base on the California or Federal laws or just because of their policies.
Apparently this book does not violate any laws or Blurb’s policies, what this book does it hurt feeling of the print shop workers. Hurting somebody’s feeling was enough to took it away from the site and stop sale in United States. Imagine that you or I is getting an agreement with some publishing house about printing a book and later the publisher telling you that this is impossible because print workers do not want to print it for some reason. This is Blurb’s responsibility to print it. If this particular print house does not want to print it Blurb should find another subcontractor. I do not understand why somebody dictates me and you what should we see on Blurb. Tomorrow another worker will say that some pictures of the protest and violence from anti government or pro government demonstration will hurt his/hers feelings or moral believes and that book will be taken away.
I do not know what action should be taken. I just feel that we all should do something; this is about our rights and about our freedom of art expression.