Transcriber: Brian Smiga Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
Hello everyone, today we're going to talk about selfies.
Selfies are the most modern way we have of people showing images of themselves.
But we've been showing images of ourselves for thousands of years.
So, in our talk we're going to look
at the relationship between what we're doing now
and what we've done previously.
Say for example you don't know what a selfie is,
you don't have a tween with an Instagram account.
I'll tell you, a selfie is an instant self-portrait
which you take from a mobile device,
you outstretch your arm and you snap it.
It's all you,
there's no professional photographer, there's no editor,
there's no curator
and then you instantly upload it to the Internet for global consumption.
So your private life is exposed for everyone to see.
Being a selfie maker,
you're both the creator and the subject, and you choreograph
how you're going to look in a selfie: you decide your body language,
your proximity to the camera, where you're going to look,
what you're wearing,
your milieu and very importantly your facial expression.
The medium itself has a very specific aesthetic.
First of all, most selfies have a square format,
usually they're viewed on an intimate scale,
maybe on your cell phone or mobile device.
They have a very specific photographic distortion
which usually is from the arm's length,
of the proximity of the camera lens,
so this can make your face distorted, or maybe part of the background distorted,
and then also because of the arm's length proximity,
the picture itself has a very shallow collapsed sense of space.
Many selfies,
maybe it's because of expertise or not, have a blur within the image itself,
and finally a lot of the selfies have this almost soft, unsaturated sepia tone
that have an almost nostalgic quality to them.
Many people dismiss selfies as being narcissistic, frankly many of them are,
and most people can't help looking at themselves.
I mean if you walk past a mirror,
almost everyone takes a look to see how things are going on.
(Laughter)
But let's think of selfies in relationship to art history.
Are they traditional, or are they revolutionary?
Traditionally, when people had their portraits taken, painted,
they were done by an artist,
and they were seen through the artist's eye.
Here we have Louis XIV as the Sun king, the artist has expertly
expressed his view of the world of how he wanted to express himself.
Sometimes,
even if you are the most powerful person in the world
and you hire the greatest artist,
the portraits weren't particularly always flattering.
But now we've gotten rid of the artist as the conduit, as the intermediary.
And everyone is an artist,
so they can decide how they want to brand themselves.
And with every image, they can change
their brand, their image, to the world,
advertising themselves to the world.
So, your self is a very fluid concept that is constantly being able
to be moved and developed unlike the portrait of Louis XIV,
which we now know hundreds of years later what his message was.
Let's think about self portraits,
traditionally self portraits
we think of Dürer here as a self constructed artifice,
he took ideas, what he wanted his beliefs and his ideas and put them in a painting.
Here we have Dürer equating his artistic genius
to that of almost a Christ-like creator.
And then we have the contemporary selfie
showing us his superiority with his all-knowing facial expression.
So let's think about selfies that fit into other traditional categories.
Let's consider body language.
Here we have a senator, this Roman senator,
Audience: Aw!
with this very frontal facial expression,
this unflinching expression,
looking straight at the camera.
And today, when people want to express power in their image,
they use this exact same body language.
Let's think about... Here we have a Hellenistic Aphrodite,
her head is tilted in coy flirtation,
as she is flirting with the Satyr next to her.
And over and over in contemporary selfies,
we have the same exact body language.
Many times - (Laughter)
Here we have Hercules,
his head is bowed down,
his arms are away from his body,
so that we can look at his toned, muscular, powerful torso,
because this is what defines him as who he is, as his character.
And again and again, in contemporary selfies, we have the same idea.
Even in this contemporary work,
the subject's head is even distorted by the camera lens,
it's back and a blur because his focus is his chiseled physique.
So his physicality becomes an expression of who he is.
Here we have Rembrandt as a young artist:
his eyes are sunken and dark and deep and moody,
he's got pursed lips,
his hair with his golden highlighted coifs,
and we have this contemporary selfie
attempting to express the same exact poetic angst
and anguish of youth and talent.
Not only can we refer to
art history for references,
but also to Hollywood,
so here we have Mary Pickford as a certain type of ingenue
with her golden locks, her doe eyes, her can-do spirit,
and we have the contemporary selfie modeling herself
almost exactly with that same idea.
Not only are selfies about
modeling yourself, but also showing people who you are,
where you've been.
No matter who you are, they want you to know where they've been
and they want you to maybe be jealous.
So not only look where I am, but look what I have. (Laughter)
Do you value what I have?
Do you judge me by what I have?
Let me show you what I have.
Look who I'm with.
No matter who you are and no matter how powerful you are,
you still want to legitimize your time
by showing that you're with someone who's of import.
We live in a world where we're constantly being documented and documenting.
Because of this, we're very self-conscious of the photographic process.
So as a response,
when we're taking selfies, a lot of people
make a very exaggerated facial expression,
freeze it and then take the picture.
Because they want to make sure
that you know that they're choreographing that instantaneous expression.
Certainly they don't want to be caught in a photograph where they're actually
instantaneous, unflattering and real.
Exposure to Hollywod has shown us
how to pose for pictures, how to smile for pictures,
but now this awareness of constant documentation
has made a very new expression that is really very specific to selfies
and has been dubbed the duck face.
Selfies are part of the whole history
about looking and being looked at.
Every selfie is an act of having yourself on display.
Every selfie is an act of self-voyeurism.
So let's consider the gaze in some of these pictures.
Here we have Manet's Olympia.
She is challenging us as we look at her nudity.
She's looking at us looking at her.
And we have this contemporary selfie,
taking this very same pose, using the same eye contact,
everything is very deliberate and purposeful.
Another idea of looking at the gaze is when a subject is looking away.
Then they are part of the landscape,
part of a still life, an object to be admired,
without letting the viewer know that they're being looked at.
So ultimately, who is the visual consumer of the selfie,
and how do we understand images
when they're taken out their content and context?
Maybe one person will read this in one way,
and another person in another way.
So what we do is
we place our individual perceptions,
our individual experiences
and perspectives on the image, and that creates a multitude of readings,
a multitude of stories.
Because ultimately selfies are a poignant
example of the fact that people crave to be recognized,
they crave to be remembered, validated.
This is an attempt to do these things.
But this medium, you can look at so many images
at one time that can be compared, contrasted,
dismissed, juxtaposed,
and every subject creator is always searching for originality
when they're making their images.
We have to think, when we're looking at these pieces,
when you're looking at a selfie or you're taking a selfie,
you have to think, how do I fit into the historical context?
Thank you!
(Applause)