Visual Culture Approaches to the Selfie

Description

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. 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