Manifesting Presence: The Selfie as a Looking Glass
Lineadeluz. It’s not you. 2021. https://objkt.com/asset/KT19rF3yGHVVEPUTLQGRDRoFMq82GN9riEEF/0
Is the selfie ever just a selfie?
Yes, I’m here to talk to you about selfies. But first I want you to consider the power of portraiture and how it is tied to technological development. A portrait is a way to create and sustain memory. However, historically, people and institutions have used photography to construct biased social narratives (think Galton’s eugenics efforts for example). Consider how photography is a performative action that sets a visual stage, shaping collective memory through a literal representation of who is being seen (and how they are being portrayed) and who is not—a narrative choice made by the few who had the ability to capture a moment according to their worldview.
With time, the power of representation has shifted to the masses. To put things into perspective, the first camera phone was introduced in 1999 (though it didn’t become widespread until a few years later). Now, in the span of almost 20 years, we have become inseparable from our phones and by extension, our cameras. Image-making has become a day-to-day activity. For many of us, this means taking selfies. Although some roll their eyes at the existence and popularity of the selfie, we cannot deny the diverse impact that it has had on our society. The selfie has become a ubiquitous action of existing both online and IRL. As the ‘00s pop idiom goes, “pics or it didn't happen,” and as the rise of influencer culture has shown, we love a good selfie. The selfie is the most significant and relevant portrait medium of the 2010s—and will probably be for a long time to come.
The selfie phenomena didn’t just come out of nowhere. Self-portraits have been around for a long time and the selfie is just a product of its time and technology. In the same way that self-portraits clue us into the social, cultural, and historical context of the artist, selfies are also filled with diverse symbolic markers. People find ways to leave their mark and this mark will tell us more than what we see at face-value. Among the many things that selfies can be, they serve as artifacts that can tell us much about a particular socio-technical moment in time.
The selfie as artifact
The story of the selfie is impacted by developments in both photographic technology and social networking platforms. Anything can affect the outcome: from the type of device you use to take a selfie, to the applications used to edit the photo, and the platform you share it on. This makes it necessary to consider the influence of these technologies on self-representation.
Lineadeluz. Naturaleza Queer: Part One. 2020. https://objkt.com/asset/KT19rF3yGHVVEPUTLQGRDRoFMq82GN9riEEF/1
We saw this in the increased use of edited and filtered selfies that came into popular use through apps like Facetune. Released in 2013, Facetune’s existence garnered so much interest that within two years they generated millions of revenue. This got social networking platforms to pay attention and in 2017, Instagram added face filters to their stories function. A new type of platform cyborg was born. Filters became an instant attraction because now people could see their face change in real time. Users no longer needed to buy an external app. With this filter proliferation, they didn’t even need to edit the images themselves anymore. Soon, certain filters started trending, normalizing expectations of how to present oneself online: smooth skin, thin noses, full lips, contoured jaws. For some, these filtered selfies ended up as visual references for their plastic surgery.
We can also see the influence of these technologies on selfies in the algorithms embedded in the platform infrastructure of social networks. The platforms we inhabit are built on biased algorithms that censor bodies that do not fit neatly into hegemonic expressions of the self. There is substantial evidence about the disproportionate amount of censorship on Instagram that targets marginalized communities. The idea behind an algorithm for personalization seems convenient at first. However, when we consider how our interests, behavior, and interactions on the platform are tracked and monetized, the harm outweighs the good–at least for some users.
Other concerns which you may already be aware of are: the harvesting of biometric data with no type of oversight; addiction to social validation online; toxic aspirational influencer culture. Through the selfie we can easily become our data; our likes become a product––willfully or not. The explorations I share here are particular to the social sites I have most engaged with, so these observations can look different depending on the platform. From Myspace to Tumblr to Facebook, to Instagram and now TikTok, there are important nuances that most certainly impact the type of visual production emerging from users.
From the above examples, notice the many ways that mediating the body through interfaces not only references materiality, but also layers social, cultural, and psychological influences. The act of taking a selfie and how it is shared comes with a lot of social norms and expectations. How we engage with the selfie has ideological and cultural significance. In my own explorations with the selfie, I am interested in how it aligns with historical vernacular image making in Latinx communities as a way to craft and sustain memory.
I selfie, therefore I exist
Now, let’s consider how the selfie is a site for channeling and archiving various expressions of personal and communal identity. In Aperture Magazine’s Winter 2021 issue on Latinx photography, curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas states that, despite being an integral part of the United States since its inception, Latinxs are often made invisible by ongoing systems of exclusion. Remembering and forgetting in memory building are intentional and strategic, making photography both performative and political. In “Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History”, Elizabeth Ferrer illustrates how Latinx communities preserved their visual culture through vernacular photography.
Lineadeluz. El selfie declara. 2021.
Tompkins Rivas’ and Ferrer’s engagements allow me to contextualize the selfie as a form of digital vernacular photography. Since image-making is now a daily activity, we are seeing new visual landscapes emerge like never before, fostering new social imaginaries. While it is true that the commercial availability of the camera contributed to the widespread practice of photography, most images were housed in photo albums. The material limitations of photo albums hindered widespread sharing of communal histories. In contrast, selfies are facilitated and encouraged by platform infrastructure. Online spaces have the capacity to become important communal nodes for connection with others, regardless of profile settings. There is no longer a sharp division between a public or private profile since features like “close friends” allow users to blur boundaries between public and private content. Whereas the photo album is inherently private with limited reach, now social media users play within a spectrum of accessibility and restriction in sharing themselves.
The selfie as a practice and a concept becomes especially transformative for those who have been historically excluded from the mainstream visual narrative. Through sharing their own self-portraits, users are creating new visual lexicons that exist parallel to a dominant visual narrative. The selfie has made representation and documentation no longer a luxury accessible to a few. Instead, it functions as a new visual strategy to explore and define cultural identity on our own terms. In this way, selfies offer a new form of self-expression by which social media becomes a site of potentiality for an autonomous and pluralistic form of representative visibility.
As a queer, Latinx femme, the selfie is a transformative performance that intoxicates me with a sense of possibility. My encounters with the selfie transformed frustrations regarding self-identification and a sense of belonging, and morphed into a safe-space for me to play with expressing who I am and who I could be. When I interact with the camera, often unexpected physical reactions and emotional sensations arise. Smartphones turned the act of taking a selfie akin to the act of looking in a mirror; it is a looking glass where I am able to marvel at all of my multiplicities. It was through this exploration of the selfie that I aligned with my queerness, and my selfies became an archive of the performative action of becoming. A medium of vulnerability and fragility as well as strength and resilience.
Through these embodied experiments, I have developed a unique sensibility when approaching more philosophical inquiries regarding the nature of the selfie as a site of knowledge production and dissemination. Particularly, my background in sociology complements my visual artistic practice when observing and thinking about how individuals are documenting themselves and the impact that this generates in archiving their community in general. The selfie playfully blurs the line between self-portraiture and social document. It is a visual manifesto used to address social issues pertinent to communities. Selfies are an evocative medium that speaks to the undeniable potential of vernacular photography as political praxis.
Lineadeluz. I am poderosa. 2020. https://objkt.com/asset/KT19rF3yGHVVEPUTLQGRDRoFMq82GN9riEEF/5
Selfies allow us to creatively enunciate ourselves within our social networks, while at the same time contributing to communal aesthetics that build social and cultural capital. Here we can understand how the selfie can serve as a powerful tool for exploring gender-full self-representation and queer memory building. It is an expansive medium that is as visually and conceptually diverse as the needs of those who use it. For those belonging to groups that have been part of the dominant visual culture, the selfie wouldn’t seem like anything remarkable. But for those of us from communities that have been intentionally excluded from dominant visual culture, the selfie is literal visual proof that we exist––that I exist. Selfies are daring, dissident declarations that affirm that I don’t need to look a certain way to be worthy of being shared, of being remembered. There no longer needs to be an outsider to come and tell me I am worthy of being documented. Instead, I decide as both creator and observer. This is a feeling I am sure others have come to know as well.
But first, let me take a selfie
Compared to traditional media outlets, social networks offer more freedom and accessibility for diverse communities to create and share their own narratives. However, both traditional media and social networks are owned by large corporate conglomerates that restrict and censor users, albeit in different ways. Even within these spaces of restriction, the selfie finds the poetic possibility of presence in step with social media’s evolution. The selfie is continuing the legacy of vernacular photography as a way of sharing lived notions of culture that would otherwise be unseen. In this manner, the selfie is a practice of visual decolonization showing that we are living in the multiplicity of our ways, despite efforts to continually exclude us or compartmentalize us. The discomfort the selfie generates results from the shifting dynamics of representation, challenging mediums of power that have historically excluded marginalized communities. Therefore, the selfie is a praxis of refusal against stereotypes that plague the representation of marginalized bodies.
The selfie phenomenon is constantly evolving as a visual lexicon, and is never homogenous. It is a multi-site of abundant potential and contradictory concerns offering modes for personal expression, interpersonal connections, and collective memory building. It is a medium, a strategy, a performance, a critique, a possibility, a genesis, a connection, on and on. For now, let this be an invitation to consider the role of this artifact in your life. What would this artifact say about you? What would this artifact say about your community? How would this artifact fit into a larger narrative? Let it take on a worthy expression that serves as an invitation to the current state of visual memory making for both individuals and communities. Be intentional with your image and your memory. Talk to others about it and notice what comes up—biases, discomforts, pleasure and possibilities. By doing so, we can explore the reflections and implications that converge at the selfie, and navigate its impact on our lives and society.
Join me by contributing to generating diverse visual cultures, forging presence and memory, one selfie at a time.
—
If you or anyone you know is engaging with selfies in their practice or explorations, please join the directory of the selfie institute.
Please follow my work and words at:
IG: @lineadeluz
TW: cyborg_brujx
Website: https://lineadeluz.me/
Lineadeluz is a transmaterial alchemist, creating interventions from the social performance of being both IRL and online. Their pieces serve as visual offerings to the universe to transmute towards bountiful realities from a place of dissident presence and contemplation. They believe in the transformative power of aesthetics, spellcasting through imaginative interplays of language and imagery. Through the intervened selfie as a medium, Lineadeluz practices autonomous queer self-representation, using it as a tool to challenge identity, demonstrating gender's malleability through technology. Growing up in Compton, they studied Sociology/Art Practice at UC Berkeley and currently live between Los Angeles and Mexico City.