JANguarte

by Jan Galligan and Lillian Mulero
Santa Olaya, PR

Last August, photographer/artist, Adal Maldonado invited his 2500 followers to become a part of an art exhibition at Roberto Paradise gallery by uploading a selfie photograph to his Facebook page. “There are no restrictions,” said Adal. “It can celebrate or criticize narcissism, or it can be an act of artistic intention.” Over 500 people responded to his invitation, which was also a challenge and a rebuke. Adal's challenge was an attempt to try to move selfie pictures away from static self-images towards a more artistic interpretation of the self. The rebuke is implicit in the title. 

Go Fuck Yourself, entered the published lexicon in 1836 when a Boston woman was convicted of public obscenity after calling a group of women “bloody whores” and telling them to “go fuck themselves.” Adal seems to say that selfies, in their generic format are not worth the effort, “fuck them” while also condemning such images as masturbatory self-indulgences.

The Ultimate Selfie (detail) Adal Maldonado, 2014

As Adal said in one of his ongoing News from Nowhere postings: Selfies are a cybernet reflection of the f-cked up way society teaches young people that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness. I propose that posting a more thoughtful or creative selfie or the selfie as political activism or an intentionally unattractive selfie can be ways to explore issues of body image as a reaction against the narcissism or over-sexualization of the typical selfie.

The first selfie, or photographic self-portrait, is attributed to Robert Cornelius, an American pioneer in photography, who produced a daguerreotype of himself in 1839 which was also one of the first photographs of a person. The modern internet-based selfie first appeared on MySpace and was soon supplanted by thousands of self-portraits published on Facebook, starting around 2005, and characterized as “amateurish, flash-blinded self-portraits, often taken in front of a bathroom mirror.” These self-images quickly evolved to photos, mostly of young females, shot from a high angle which exaggerate the size of the eyes and give a flattering impression of a slender pointed chin. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone which featured a camera lens not only on the back of the camera body, the standard mode for taking pictures, but also on the front, designed to provide a picture of the user when the phone is used for FaceTime or Skype conversations. People immediately exploited this feature as a means to make still-image self portraits, in a manner that was easier and faster, and which allow users complete control over how they present themselves.

Ease of use and user control are what appealed most to Adal in issuing his invitation. In response to an inquiry on his Facebook page, he replied, “This project is … evolving in many interesting directions. It began when I agreed to exhibit my auto-portraits at Roberto Paradise in Santurce. Reflecting on how the expo might also have a current urgency and noticing how a cybernet pop culture has sprung up around the selfie - although mostly concerned narcissistic issues - I thought that it might be interesting if I started an anti-selfie page called Go Fuck Your Selfie and encouraged my artist friends and the general public to upload selfies … to me it seems like we are redefining the selfie as artistic expression.”

This past year has seen a world-wide explosion of selfies. The online mobile photo-sharing and social networking service Instagram reports an astounding 53 million photographs labeled with the hashtag #selfie. According to a Time magazine article, the Philippines, New York City, Miami, Malaysia, and Los Angeles are among the most popular places in the world for selfies. This has led to a proliferation of selfie-related terminology including: Selfie Face, Selfie Arm, Selfie Addict, Selfie-Holic, Selfie Session, Selfie Thursday, Selfie Overload. The Urban Dictionary defines Selfie-Obsessed as “a person so self-obsessed that they post copious amounts of selfies on social media with no purpose other than to say "Look at me!" They do this in hopes of getting 'likes' and comments telling them they are good looking since that is their way of validating their looks and sense of self(ie)-worth.”

How people see themselves and how they choose to depict themselves in public was definitively explored by the sociologist Erving Goffman in his seminal 1959 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, the first study to treat face-to-face interactions as a sociological subject. Goffman's insight was to define and interpret those interactions as private theatrical performances presented in public. By applying terminology of the theater to personal interactions, Goffman demonstrated that in everyday encounters, people could best present themselves by: believing in the role they are playing, generally a different role for each person encountered; using dramatic effect when confronting others, especially to emphasize what they most want to convey; presenting an idealized version of themselves which adds a feeling of significance to the encounter; seeking to maintain control of their expressions, either to maximize what they are presenting, or to conceal what they do not wish to present; creating a sense of mystification about themselves, which helps to maintain social distance in the observer; and finally seeking to maintain a distinction between the real and the contrived, in themselves and their presentations.

Taken together, these precepts can provide a step by step guide for the creation of selfie photographs that can then have an impact on the social media audience. Yet more work is required to move these images from the social medium to the realm of art. Can selfies be art? Art critic Jerry Saltz has written recently in their defense. He says that it is rare for a new genre to appear in art, but he considers selfies to be a type of self-portraiture formally distinct from all others in history, distinguished by their being boring, silly, casual, improvised, fast, and nearly always taken at arm's length unless a mirror is employed. Nonetheless, he considers them significant. Meanwhile a war of words is taking place in the art critical arena. Some writers have joined Saltz in his call to include selfies as legitimate works of art. Others have taken a strong stance against the possibility that selfies might ever be considered art.