A trade-off solution could be to turn the hole color from black to a gray that match the average tone from the perimeter area surrounding it. The hole would be less noticeable at the first sight and would allow people to focus in the rest of the photo.
My impression was that that is precisely the whole point of this project: to draw attention to the gaping hole in the photos, to highlight the crass censorship which led to these photos being suppressed for years. The hole _is_ the focus of the photo, hence why the title is 'The black hole photographs', to highlight that these photos were chucked into a black hole.
Try reading the article. In this instance the editors were the censors, as they were government workers.
And regardless of whether or not you want to call it censorship or some obfuscated term like "editorial choices", the point remains that the black holes draw attention to these "editorial choices", which seems to very clearly be the point of this project. Removing them, or making them unobtrusive is counter to the aims of the project.
As others have pointed out in this comment section, there's good evidence that the editor just didn't like these photos, since nearly every one has a nearly identical photo, with better composition, that was "approved".
After verifying this with around 20 random photos, I now agree with that comment, and disagree with the article. The article doesn't seem to have merit.
