This collection explores the cultural fascination with social media forms of self-portraiture, "selfies," with a specific interest in online self-imaging strategies in a Western context.
This book examines the selfie as a social and technological phenomenon but also engages with digital self-portraiture as representation: as work that is committed to rigorous object-based analysis. The scholars in this volume consider the topic of online self-portraiture―both its social function as a technology-driven form of visual communication, as well as its thematic, intellectual, historical, and aesthetic intersections with the history of art and visual culture.
This book will be of interest to scholars of photography, art history, and media studies.
Author(s): Derek Conrad Murray
Series: Routledge History of Photography
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 224
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Introduction: "The Selfie as Visual Culture: A Methodological Quandary"
Technologies of the Selfie
A Methodological Challenge
Looking Ahead
Notes
1. Counter-Selfies and the Real Subsumption of Society
Selfies, Visibility, Agency, Surveillance
The Formal and Real Subsumption of Communication and Community
Selfies, Social Media, and the Real Subsumption of Communication and Community
Transparency and Opacity in Counter-Selfies
Notes
2. Self-Portraiture and Self Performance
Excellences & Perfections
The Pictures Generation
Leeson and Wearing; Intimacy and Masking
Switching Lives With...
Notes
3. Proliferating Identity: Trans Selfies as Contemporary Art
The Cult of Portraiture
The Trans Tipping Point: A Misleading Misconception
Selfies: Highlighting the Politics of Portraiture
Prolific Self-Imaging as Contemporary Interventions
Constructed Vernacular and Expanding Visual Regimes of Gender and Racialization
Aesthetics of Flatness, Decolonizing Photographs
Concluding Thoughts
Notes
Bibliography
4. The Evolution of the Selfie: Influencers, Feminism, and Visual Culture
The "Selfie" and Its Discontents
The Social Media Influencer and the Rise of Instafame
On Post-Feminism and the "Selfie"
Post-Feminism and Social Media in the Blogging Era
Technologies of the Self(ie)
"Selfie" or Self-Portrait?
Social Media Self-Fashioning and the "Selfie" as Political Activism
Conclusion
Notes
5. How Selfies Think: The Cognitive Dimensions of Digital Photography
Selfies as Traces of the Thought to Take a Selfie
Selfies as Part of What One Is Saying to That Other Self That Is Just Coming into Life in the Flow of Time
Selfies as Thoughtless
Notes
6. Domestic Snapshots: Female Self-Imaging Practices Then and Now
Selfies as Visual Texts
Formal Problems: Selfies as Poor Images
Sherman, Self-Making, Performativity
The Gendering of Technology and Its Role in the Public Imaginary of the Selfie
Photographic Performative Self-Representation: Lee and Nakadate
Negotiating the Commercial
Notes
7. The Selfie in Consumer Culture
Self-Portraiture, Selfies, and the History of Photography
Artistic Background of Contemporary Self-Portraits
Promotional Aspects of Selfies
Two Iconic Selfies
Conclusion
Notes
References
8. Selfie Narcissism, Consumerism and the Pathologizing of Women
Who's Afraid of the Selfie?
Technology, Mental Health, and Pathologizing of Women
The Selfie as Contagion
The Confidence Gap
Recent Issues in Gender and the Tech Industry
The Selfie and Consumer Validation
Conclusion: Wielding the Selfie in Advanced Capitalism
Notes
Index
