In this task, I was required to experiment with the idea of a 'selfie', to look at famous examples of self-portraits in art and photography and to use these to help to create my own examples. The current obsession with photographic self-portraits ('The Selfie') can be traced back to the origins of photography. One of the first things photographers did when they learned how to fix light on a surface was to turn their rudimentary cameras on themselves. The earliest known example comes from 1839, the same year that Louis Dageurre patented the 'invention' of photography as a commercially viable process. Since then, the self-portrait, a genre inherited from painting, has become a staple form of photographic image making.
Selfie is slang for self-portrait. It is used today to infer a photographic self-portrait taken on a mobile device and shared via social media. In 2013, 'selfie' was word of the year in the Oxford English Dictionary. The inclusion of front facing cameras on smart phones and the popularity of social media sites like Instagram and Snapchat have made the posting of selfies increasing popular as a form of photographic self-expression.
The 'selfie' accounts for a large proportion of the digital photographs people make. According to a recent survey, 24 billion selfies were uploaded to the Internet last year (2016). |
Robert Corneluis' Self Portrait: The First Ever 'Selfie' (1839)
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Instagram Upload, 2014 from the works 'Excellences & Perfections'
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Fashion photographer Rankin, told BBC Radio 5 about his worries over selfie culture. He discussed how, in his personal experience, you can become easily 'obsessed' with taking selfies and remain in self-denial. He encouraged people, especially young people, to try to look beyond the surface of these images of 'perfection'. He also brings up how you can easily create a version of you that doesn't reflect reality. He argues that portraiture was before a medium in which people's uniqueness and personality could be showcased, but that this has been soiled by selfie culture which encourages people to start 'comparing yourself to yourself'.
This idea of an alternate reality that can be created by the use of selfies is explored by the photographer Amalia Ulman. Ulman began to act out the story of a fictious alter ego on her instagram account by posting images on her feed. Followers liked and commented, unaware that this was all a manipulated show. Henry Carrol in the book 'Photographers on Photography' wrote that 'Ulman's work reveals a disturbing truth ... by taking selfies and sharing them online, photography has given us what we all yearn for: an identity ... that isn't ours'. He goes on to comment that 'photography has turned us all into marketers - and the product being sold is ourselves'.
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'Confronted with an up swell of bigotry both personal and public, I was forced to ask myself, what do people see when they look at me. Am I nothing but black? Is that skin tone enough to describe my nature and expectations in life? Do my strong teeth make me a strong worker? Does my character resonate louder than my skin tone? Using a photographic process linked to the times of ethnographic classification, I repeatedly explore my ethnic features in Character Recognition. The lessons learned are haunting and frightening in these modern times.'
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