National Selfie Day 2022

The selfie is vilified – and has been called a symptom of our social media-driven narcissism or even a masturbation of self-promotion. However it is a complex format that cannot be defined as being narcissistic in and of itself - it is also just a self portrait and a communication tool.

THE Selfie as a tool of resistance

Muslim woman counters an anti-Muslim protest — with selfies. Zakia Belkhiri / Jurgen Augusteyns

There are plenty of examples of selfies as key for empowering marginalised groups like women, people of colour (POC), the LGBTQ community, migrants and refugees . In her book, The Selfie Generation, author Alicia Eler breaks with clichés to imagine the selfie as a double-edged sword, at once an empowering and vulnerable phenomenon, characteristic of the digital age. Selfies as a political tool of opposition and resistance.

THE SELFIE AS ART

Intransitu, 2022 by Ada Ada Ada is a challenge to the Instagram moderation protocol.

On Instagram, the Copenhagenbased artists Ada Ada Ada posts an update from her gender transition every Thursday. As she puts it: ”The question is: When will Instagram ban my nipples? The in transitu project is a challenge to the Instagram moderation protocols. The platform has a rule that women's nipples are not allowed to be displayed on pictures, unless they're breastfeeding. However, as a trans woman currently undergoing a gender transition, Instagram does not categories me as a woman. So each week I put up a picture of myself, where my nipples are visible. At some point, my selfies will no longer be allowed on the platform, because they are perceived to be belonging to a woman. This will be a joyous occasion, because it means that even the largest image-based social media in the world sees me as a woman. However, it will also be a stark reminder that I have now lost my male privilege.”

THE FIRST SELFIE

The first selfie: Apparently, snapped by a teenager in 1913 - the Grand Duchess Anastasia in

The youngest daughter of Russia's last czar snapped the first selfie with the wildly popular camera of her time—the Kodak brownie, released in 1900—and a mirror to capture her own likeness. As Megan Garber describes it: “She is gazing at herself. She is looking at herself. She looks, to me, a little bit curious. And a little bit excited. And a little bit scared” The Atlantic.

Even before the invention of photography, the portrait was used for self-promotion and staging. Its original purpose was to elevate a ruler (such as in ancient Egypt) and show his divine status. Later, in the Renaissance, the portrait took on the trait of representing the individual; a particular position, social status or service. And it was only during the 1800s that art began using the portrait as a depiction of sensory moments, moods and volatile emotions. Degas was fascinated by private moments in the 1850s, as was Cartier-Bresson. Later, Hitchcock explored voyeurism up in his 1954 film Rear Window and contemporary Cindy Sherman has explored the self-portrait’s transformation of identity.74 According to Alison Jackson, staged photos create a desire: “You can never reach that person depicted in the photograph, it is a piece of paper (or screen that you are looking at). But it means that the desire to get to know the person in real-life is intensified. A photo serves as a catalyst, but in reality there is no chance of you meeting George Clooney or Brad Pitt. You can only meet them through a picture and the story it tells”. Stories, which for Jackson are false. It is precisely via manipulation that Jackson wants to exhibit the deception of the celebrity industry and ask: Why have we always been obsessed by other people’s private moments?

LOOK AT ME - THE TABOO OF DEVIATION

The selfie reminds us a lot of the desire for exposure and jabs at the taboo of deviation. Enabled by the format, we put ourselves in the centre, highlighting ourselves as something special, and, thereby, we risk breaking that informal social control, which ensures a group’s existence. When an individual acts egocentrically, it is perceived as a threat to the social order and the group’s reaction may include excluding the culprit.

When an 11-year-old boy posted his first selfie on his new Instagram profile, he chose a photo of himself in a superhero costume with the words “I’m cool” under the picture. He understood the rule that applies to social media such as Instagram: post a photo of yourself where you look cool. But he did not understand that this rule, out of necessity, is implicit – unless it is loaded, for instance, with irony. And he certainly did not understand that the text could be perceived other than as intended. Instead of appearing cool, he was considered childish. The others in the group made fun of him; they made a show of him by, for example, inviting friends from the class or outsiders to his profile with condescending comments. It is one thing that the class following him on Instagram found a superhero costume to be a bit too childish, but what made the difference was that, as an Instagram novice, he did not understand how to place his ‘look at me’ in a strategic context . It is quite natural when a three-year-old shouts “look at me”. We do the same when we post a selfie, we say: “Look at me”, but strictly controlled by a set of social rules regulated according to which group we are part of. Generally speaking, it is not nice to behave like a three-year-old and one of the most important rules when communicating via selfies on social media, is, paradoxically, camouflaging your desire to be seen by focusing on the context or situation; it is perfectly acceptable to take a selfie when there is an occasion to be celebrated: a birthday or another festive event. Selfies are also accepted if they contain a message; a position that makes sense for the recipient group.

The fascination with private moments 

Artist Alison Jackson works with those mediated relationships, which, according to her, are conditioned by the illusion of the internet: that we believe that a shared image, a visual staging on Instagram, a portrait or a situation can build a relationship with a person we do not know. She bends reality and history with her artificial and distorted representations of private moments such as her photo of Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy lookalikes in hot embrace. At the same time, she interrupts the media’s massive portrayal of celebrities and exhibits contemporary warped private spheres and craving for celebrity relationships.In an interview on the site Complex, she questions the fascination we have with famous people from royalty to film actors, reality stars to television personalities.72 “I’m fascinated by how people get so emotional and involved in celebrities when they have never met them. There is no intimacy; it is a purely mediated relationship, which is actually an industry. It’s like a new religion; at least, it is here in the UK. Famous people are like little saints, representing different stories: Angelina Jolie is a great mother, actress and a political motivator. Kate Middleton represents a true princess fairy tale. They all stand for different things that we, the public, can look up to and aspire to”.73