Selfie City: Alise Tifental

Source: Tifentale, A (2014) Selfie City Available at: http://d25rsf93iwlmgu.cloudfront.net/downloads/Tifentale_Alise_Selfiecity.pdf last accessed September 2018

2013 selfie was the “international word of the year”.

Vernacular photography and social media phenomenon.

Oxford dictionary “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”

elfie encompasses digital self-portraits.

“A new way of not only representing ourself to others but of communicating with one another through images.” (Rawlings, 2013 as cited by Tifentale, 2014)

Only 4% of all photos posted on Instagram during one week for the selfie city project were actual selfies.

Early selfies – Robert Cornelius – daguerreotype (1839) Hippolyte Bayard self-portrait as drowned man (1840)

Early photographs of Americans on tour in Egyptian ruins can be described as building the “American self”  (Lingwood , 1986 as cited by Tifentale, 2014). Through self-portrait, the self is constructed. Performance. “The most intimate place for narcissistic contemplation, the room with the mirror – a bathroom for example – becomes in this context the most common of places, where every distinction of the self is in the end abolished.”  Chevrier (n.d)

Every self-portrait is the portrait of another which is a social construction.

Selfie consists of image and meta-data. It has likes and shares. Instagram – instantaneous – community – communal and public activity #’s

Photography – time and effort – not selfie if not shared on social media,

Selfies fit a small number of the population – young adults (median age 23.7 years in 2013

Selfies not an art form – Marche.  Images are not rare. Selfies have been exhibited in galleries e.g. National #Selfie Portrait Gallery in National Portrait Gallery in London, curated by Kyle Chayka and Marina Galperina.

Leica sponsored coffee table book.

(Jeff Koons  2017 https://hyperallergic.com/403768/jeff-koons-snapchat-augmented-reality/)

Berger (2011) the experience of taking the photograph is more important than the pictures themselves.