For the last year and a half I have been one of the curators of ****Contrasted Gallery. ****CG is an online project, founded more than 10 years ago by Manuel Diumenjó. He and his co-curators invite on a monthly basis interesting artists to exhibit a collection of their Flickr pictures at ****CG.

Technically ****CG is a Flickr group where only curators have the right to ‘admit’ pictures. We invite artists, discuss with them their work and ask them to chose up to 50 pictures that they want to exhibit for one month. After the show the pictures remain in the gallery so that interested people always have the opportunity of reviewing artistic work that has been accumulated in over 10 years. So it has become a fascinating place where artistic photography is shown.

And now comes Flickr. And threatens to delete all pictures above 1000 of all its members that have not become Pro. Do you have an idea what that means? According to Manuel’s estimation between 60 and 70% of all pictures that have been accumulated at ****CG over the years will be deleted. Gone! Forever!

So Flickr is not only urging people to decide if they want their own collection of pictures to be deleted if they don’t pay the ransom, they also destroy pro-actively art and the work people have put into this over the last decade. This is a scandal!

Art needs to be protected from barbarians of all kind. Art cannot be “deleted”. The attitude behind this is awful. This is close to fascist behaviour. A company that is deleting art has not understood its responsibility.

Here is the link to ****Contrasted Gallery. If you click the links on the left han side you get to the respective exhibition of an artist. https://www.flickr.com/groups/contrasted_gallery/discuss/

If you think that Flickr’s new policy needs a change, particularly in order to prevent the destruction of art, write them, swamp them with requests! Here is the link to the Flickr help page for this topic: www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157702923034264/