Selfies and the Self
Selfies and the Self

Summary/Abstract: Film cameras made it possible for individuals to present themselves to others, to assume and feel agency, also to change it, to utilize agency to claim participation in diverse collectivities. Most recently, digital cameras have presented their users with astonishing ways to encourage but also to disseminate diverse acts of agency. In this paper the author proposes to bring to the fore the selfie (an emerging sub-genre of portraiture) as a new cultural product responsible for mediation, production, and transmission of subjectivities in the global mediascapes. Framing the subject in ways which defy ennobled aesthetic principles of photography,its cultivated artistry, selfies reconfigure and adapt ways the subject represent and understand themselves. This paper argues that selfies create visual spaces of novel modesof selfhood, of its certification and assertion.

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