Exploring The Selfie 1St Ed Edition Julia Eckel Full Chapter

Exploring the Selfie 1st ed.
Edition Julia
Eckel
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/exploring-the-selfie-1st-ed-edition-julia-eckel/
Exploring the Selfie
Historical, Theoretical,
and Analytical Approaches
to Digital Self-Photography
Edited by
Julia Eckel, Jens Ruchatz, Sabine Wirth
Julia Eckel • Jens Ruchatz • Sabine Wirth
Editors

Historical, Theoretical, and
Analytical Approaches to Digital
Self-Photography
Editors
Julia Eckel Jens Ruchatz
Philipps-University Marburg Philipps-University Marburg
Marburg, Germany Marburg, Germany
Ruhr-University Bochum
Bochum, Germany
Sabine Wirth
Philipps-University Marburg
Marburg, Germany
ISBN 978-3-319-57948-1 ISBN 978-3-319-57949-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57949-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017960844
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: bortonia
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International
Publishing AG part of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgments
This book is the outcome of a conference titled #SEFLIE—Imag(in)ing

the Self in Digital Media, which took place at Philipps-University,
Marburg, Germany, in April 2015 and was made possible through fund-
ing from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG), and the Ursula-Kuhlmann-Fonds/Ursula Kuhlmann Fund. We
would like to thank all the participants of the conference for their inspir-
ing input, ideas, and thoughts that directly or indirectly found their way
into this book. Furthermore, we would like to thank Kevin Pauliks for his
help with manuscript preparation. Finally, special thanks go out to
Palgrave Macmillan, especially Martina O’Sullivan, Felicity Plester, and
Heloise Harding, for their kind support and inexhaustible patience with
our project, and to our three anonymous peer reviewers for their produc-
tive comments and encouraging feedback.
v
Contents
1 The Selfie as Image (and) Practice: Approaching Digital

Self-Photography 1
Julia Eckel, Jens Ruchatz, and Sabine Wirth
Part I The Selfie in Media Theory and History 25
2 The Consecration of the Selfie: A Cultural History 27

André Gunthert
3 Selfie Reflexivity: Pictures of People Taking Photographs 49

Jens Ruchatz
4 Locating the Selfie within Photography’s History—and

Beyond 83
Kris Belden-Adams
5 The Selfie as Feedback: Video, Narcissism, and the Closed-

Circuit Video Installation 95
Angela Krewani
vii
viii Contents
Part II The Displayed Self: The Selfie as Aesthetic Object

and Networked Image 111
6 The Selfie and the Face 113

Hagi Kenaan
7 Selfies and Authorship: On the Displayed Authorship

and the Author Function of the Selfie 131
Julia Eckel
8 Competitive Photography and the Presentation of

the Self 167
Alise Tifentale and Lev Manovich
9 Of Duck Faces and Cat Beards: Why Do Selfies Need

Genres? 189
Bernd Leiendecker
Part III The Self on Display: Technology and Dispositif

of the Selfie 211
10 Interfacing the Self: Smartphone Snaps

and the Temporality of the Selfie 213
Sabine Wirth
11 The Video Selfie as Act and Artifact of Recording 239

Florian Krautkrämer and Matthias Thiele
12 Be a Hero: Self-Shoots at the Edge of the Abyss 261

Winfried Gerling
Contents
ix
13 Strike a Pose: Robot Selfies 285

Lisa Gotto
Part IV Displaying the Self: Social, Political, and Creative

Interventions 303
14 Selfies and Purikura as Affective, Aesthetic Labor 305

Mette Sandbye
15 The Kid Selfie as Self-Inscription: Reinventing

an Emerging Media Practice 327
Alexandra Schneider and Wanda Strauven
16 “Machos” and “Top Girls”: Photographic Self-Images

of Berlin Hauptschüler 351
Stefan Wellgraf
Index 379
Notes on Contributors
Kris Belden-Adams is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the

University of Mississippi (USA) and specializes in the history and theory
of photography. Her work has been published in the journals Lexia:
Journal of Semiotics (2017), Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal
of the South (2017), Photographies (2015), and Afterimage (2012). Essays
and book chapters by Belden-Adams also have been published by
Bloomsbury Academic Press (2017), Peter Lang Publishing (2017), and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2012).
Julia Eckel is Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of Media
Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, and scientific coordinator of the
DFG research training group Das Dokumentarische (“Documentary prac-
tices”) at Ruhr-University Bochum. Her research interests include anthro-
pomorphic motifs in audiovisual media, technologies of the self,
animation, and the temporality of film. Recent publications include:
Zeitenwende(n) des Films (2013); Im Wandel … Metamorphosen der
Animation (ed. with E. Feyersinger, M. Uhrig; 2017); and (Dis)Orienting
Media and Narrative Mazes (ed. with B. Leiendecker, D. Olek,
C. Piepiorka; 2013).
xi
xii Notes on Contributors
Winfried Gerling is Professor for Concepts and Aesthetics of New

Media in European Media Studies at the University of Applied Sciences
Potsdam. His research focuses on the theory and practice of photography,
digitality, and media environments. Recent publications include: “Moved
Images—Velocity, Immediacy and Spatiality of Photographic
Communication” in M. Elo, M. Salo, and M. Goodwin, eds., Photographic
Powers (2015); “knipsen” in H. Christians, M. Bickenbach, and
N. Wegmann eds., Historisches Wörterbuch des Mediengebrauchs (2014);
and Was der Fall ist (with F. Goppelsröder; 2017).
Lisa Gotto is Professor at Internationale Filmschule Köln and at Cologne
Game Lab, TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences. Her research inter-
ests include media history and media theory, visual aesthetics and digital
media culture. Recent publications include: “Fantastic Views. Superheroes,
Visual Perception and Digital Perspective” in J. Gilmore and M. Storck,
eds., Superhero Synergies. Comic Book Characters Go Digital (2014); and
New Game Plus. Perspektiven der Game Studies. Genres—Künste—Diskurse
(ed. with B. Beil and G. S. Freyermuth; 2015).
André Gunthert is Chair of Visual Studies at the Ecole des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and a Researcher in cultural history
and visual studies. In 1996 he founded the scientific journal Études pho-
tographiques. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the
history of image practices. Publications include: L’Image Partagée. La pho-
tographie numérique (2015); L’instant rêvé. Albert Londe (1993); and L’Art
de la photographie (ed. with M. Poivert; 2007).
Hagi Kenaan is a Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, special-
izing in phenomenology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of art. He is the
author of The Ethics of Visuality: Levinas and the Contemporary Gaze
(2013) and The Present Personal: Philosophy and the Hidden Face of
Language (2005) and is currently completing a book on the philosophy
of photography.
Florian Krautkrämer is Visiting Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg
University, Mainz, and wrote his dissertation on the topic of writing in
film (Schrift im Film, 2013) at Braunschweig University of Fine Arts. His
research interests include mobile and portable media, media industries,
and amateur media. Recent publications include “GoPro-Vision und
xiii
involvierter Blick: Neue Bilder der Kriegsberichterstattung” in

M.-H. Adam, S. Gellai, and J. Knifka, eds., Technisierte Lebenswelt (2016)
and Birgit Hein: Film as Idea (ed. with N. Heidenreich and H. Klippel;
2016).
Angela Krewani is Professor of Media Studies at Philipps-University
Marburg. Her research interests include digital media, media art, social
and mobile media, the hybridization of media systems, and new forms of
media narration. Recent publications include: Medienkunst. Ästhetik—
Theorie—Praxis (2016); Hybride Formen. New British Cinema—Television
Drama—Hypermedia (2001); and Artefacts/Artefictions: Transformational
Processes in Contemporary Literatures, Media, Arts and Architectures (ed.,
2000).
Bernd Leiendecker holds a PhD in media studies from Ruhr-University
Bochum. His research interests include genre theory, social media, and
film narratology. Recent publications include: “Taking Split Personalities
to the Next Level” in S. Schlickers and V. Toro, eds., Perturbatory
Narration in Film (2017); Geschichte des unzuverlässigen Erzählens im
Film (2015); and (Dis)Orienting Media and Narrative Mazes (ed. with
J. Eckel, D. Olek, C. Piepiorka; 2013).
Lev Manovich is Professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center,
City University of New York, and Director of Cultural Analytics Lab. His
research interests include cultural analytics (analysis of big cultural data
and global trends), computational social science, digital humanities, and
software studies. He is the author of Software Takes Command (2013);
Black Box—White Cube (2005); The Language of New Media (2001); and
other books and of more than 130 articles published in 35 countries.
Jens Ruchatz is Professor of Media Studies at Philipps-University
Marburg. His research covers a wide range of media (mainly photogra-
phy, film, television, and digital media) and their effects on collective
memory, time regimes, and processes of individualization. He currently
leads the project “Fragment Constellations: Periodised and Serialised
Photography (1845–1910)” in the context of the research unit
Journalliteratur. Recent book publications include Die Individualität der
Celebrity. Eine Mediengeschichte des Interviews (2014) and Medienreflexion
im Film. Ein Handbuch (ed. with K. Kirchmann, 2014).
xiv Notes on Contributors
Mette Sandbye is Professor of Photography Studies and Head of the

Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
She has written extensively on photography and contemporary art and
currently researches amateur and family photography since the 1960s.
Recent publications include: “Looking at the Family Photo Album. A
Resumed Theoretical Discussion of Why and How,” Journal of Aesthetics
& Culture (2014); “The Family Photo Album as Transformed Social
Space in the Age of ‘Web 2.0,’” in U. Ekman, ed., Throughout. Art and
Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing (2013); and Digital Snaps.
The New Face of Photography (ed. with J. Larsen; 2014).
Alexandra Schneider is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. Her field of expertise includes
amateur film and media practices, media archaeology, digital storytelling,
children and media, and world cinema. She is the author of “Die Stars
sind wir”: Heimkino als filmische Praxis in der Schweiz der Dreissigerjahre
(2004). Her work has been published in NECSUS, Projections, Film
History, Bianco e Nero, and Visual Anthropology. Together with Wanda
Strauven, she is currently preparing a book on children’s playful interac-
tion with media.
Wanda Strauven is Privatdozentin of Media Studies at the Goethe
University, Frankfurt, and Affiliate Associate Professor of Film Studies at
the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include early and
avant-garde cinema, media archaeology, and children and media. She is
the author of Marinetti e il cinema: tra attrazione e sperimentazione (2006)
and has edited several volumes, including The Cinema of Attractions
Reloaded (2006). Together with Alexandra Schneider, she is currently pre-
paring a book on children’s playful interaction with media.
Matthias Thiele is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at Technical
University Dortmund. His research interests include the theory and his-
tory of portable media, genealogy of the scene of recording, (inter-)dis-
cours theory, television and film studies, normalism and media culture,
racism and media representation. Recent publications include “‘Im
Angesicht der Dinge’: Ambulatorischer Aufzeichnungspraktiken und
Schreibtechniken des Notierens bei Alexander von Humboldt mit
xv
Seitenblick auf Georg Forster, Thomas Jefferson und Adelbert von

Chamisso” in O. Ette and J. Drews, eds., Horizonte der Humboldt-
Forschung (2016) and Portable Media (ed. with M. Stingelin; 2010).
Alise Tifentale is a PhD candidate in Art History at the Graduate
Center, City University of New York. Her research focuses on the history
of international photographers’ organizations. Recent publications
include “Rules of the Photographers’ Universe” in Photoresearcher (2017);
“The Networked Camera at Work: Why Every Self-Portrait Is Not a
Selfie, but Every Selfie Is a Photograph” in Riga Photography Biennial
(2016); “Art of the Masses: From Kodak Brownie to Instagram” in
Networking Knowledge (2015); and Photography as Art in Latvia, 1960–
1969 (2011).
Stefan Wellgraf works as an Academic Assistant at the European
University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). His research deals mainly with
exclusion, migration, and popular culture. His publications include:
Hauptschüler. Zur gesellschaftlichen Produktion von Verachtung (2012) and
Migration und Medien. Wie Fernsehen, Radio und Print auf die Anderen
blicken (2008).
Sabine Wirth is a Research and Teaching Associate at the Institute of
Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, and scientific coordinator
of the DFG research unit Journalliteratur. Her research interests include
the history and theory of personal computing with a special focus on user
interfaces, social media, (digital) image theory, and the history of writing.
Recent publications include “Between Interactivity, Control, and
‘Everydayness’—Towards a Theory of User Interfaces” in F. Hadler and
J. Haupts, eds., Interface Critique (2016).
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Collection of animal selfies. Photographs (top left to down

right) by Flickr users Robin Zebrowski (2007, CC BY 2.0), Eric
Sonstroem (2015, CC BY 2.0), Luis Vidal (2013, CC BY 2.0),
Cat Wendt (2014, CC BY 2.0), Frontierofficial (2015, CC BY
2.0), Filip Chudoba Performance. (2016, CC BY 2.0); and by
Wikimedia Commons (2014 and 2015, both CC0) 3
Fig. 2.1 Screenshot from Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, USA 1991,
MGM)28
Fig. 2.2 Retinette’s guide (Kodak, c. 1954) 30
Fig. 2.3 Different types of selfies: (a) mirror selfie, (b) reversed selfie,
(c) front camera iPad, (d) feet selfie, and (e) front camera
iPhone 4. Photos by André Gunthert 31
Fig. 2.4 “Hi Mom”—selfie by Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield
and Caterina Fake. Available from: Flickr.com, October 3, 2005
(CC BY 2.0). https://www.flickr.com/photos/12037949663@
N01/48836563/ (accessed March 29, 2017) 33
Fig. 2.5 “The Me Me Me Generation.” Front page of Time, May 20,
201336
Fig. 2.6 Advertisement campaign by Cape Times that adds a smart-
phone to famous photographs (2013). Available from: http://
theinspirationroom.com/daily/2013/cape-times-selfies/
(accessed March 20, 2017) 40
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 2.7 Oscar selfie. Available from: Twitter.com (@TheEllenShow),

March 2, 2014. https://twitter.com/theellenshow/status/4403
22224407314432?lang=de (accessed March 29, 2017) 41
Fig. 2.8 Screenshot of the “Museum of Selfies.” Available from:
Tumblr.com (Museum Of Selfies), 2014. http://museumof-
selfies.tumblr.com/archive (accessed March 29, 2017) 42
Fig. 3.1 Screenshot of a Google search with search term “selfie” (April
3, 2016) 50
Fig. 3.2 Megan Koester’s articles on “Photos of People Taking Selfies,”
as published on Vice (2014). Available from: Koester, Megan:
“Photos of People Taking Selfies at the 9/11 Memorial,” vice.
com, July 17, 2014. http://www.vice.com/read/photos-of-
people-taking-selfies-at-the-911-memorial-717; Koester,
Megan: “Photos of People Taking Selfies at an Art Museum,”
vice.com, August 15, 2014. http://www.vice.com/read/the-
art-of-the-selfie-814 (both accessed September 6, 2016) 52
Fig. 3.3 Selfie of Francesco Totti (a) and selfie scene shot by Luciano
Rossi (b), as uploaded on AS Roma’s Facebook account (2015,
2016). (a) Available from: Facebook.com (@officialasroma),
January 11, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/officialasroma/
photos/a.219092088151613.52460.209630315764457/
1071810142879799. (b) Available from: Facebook.com
(@officialasroma), June 10, 2016. https://www.facebook.com/
officialasroma/photos/a.553555668038585.1073741974.
209630315764457/796767913717358 (both accessed
September 6, 2016) 69
Fig. 3.4 “Italia is Love”—Dolce & Gabbana Summer 2016 Advertising
Campaign (Dolce & Gabbana, 2016). Available from http://
www.thefashionisto.com/dolce-gabbana-2016-spring-summer-
mens-campaign/dolce-gabbana-2016-spring-summer-mens-
campaign-003 (accessed September 2, 2016) 71
Fig. 4.1 Photographic self-portraits: (a) Robert Cornelius: Photo Self-
Portrait (1839). Public Domain (Library of Congress, USA).
Available from: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004664436/.
(b) Anastasia Nikolaevna: Self-Portrait (Photograph) (c. 1913/
October 1914). Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons).
Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
Grand_Duchess_Anastasia_Nikolaevna_self_photographic_
portrait.jpg (both accessed March 20, 2017) 86
List of Figures
xix
Fig. 6.1 Renana at the hairdresser. Printed with permission of the

photographer 116
Fig. 6.2 Ilse Bing: Self-Portrait with Leica (1931, National Gallery of
Art, Washington DC) 124
Fig. 6.3 Yonatan and Dana, getting married (a) and Ilil at home
(b). Printed with permission of the photographers and photo-
graphed127
Fig. 7.1 Macaca nigra self-portrait (2011). Public Domain (Wikimedia
Commons). Available from https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait.jpg (accessed March 20,
2017)134
Fig. 7.2 “Masterpiece”—Print-advertisement for the Samsung NX
mini (Samsung 2014). Available from: http://johannesdoerig.
com/Samsung-Masterpiece (accessed September 16, 2016) 136
Fig. 7.3 Collection of selfies. (a), (c), (e), (f ), (g), (h), (i), (k) Public
Domain (CC0). Available from: http://Pixabay.com;
(b) Available from Flickr.com (Caterina & Mike), 2015 (CC0
Mark 1.0); (d) Available from: Flickr.com (Image Catalog),
2014 (CC0 1.0 Universal); (j) Available from: Flickr.com
(Leann Williams), 2015 (Public Domain Mark 1.0);
(l) Available from Flickr.com (Mark Miner), 2015 (Public
Domain Mark 1.0) 141
Fig. 9.1 German chancellor Angela Merkel and the German national
team after Germany’s win against Portugal at the Football
World Cup 2014. Available from: Twitter.com (@RegSprecher),
June 16, 2014. https://twitter.com/RegSprecher/status/
478612717428019201 (accessed September 15, 2016) 191
Fig. 9.2 Two Belfies. (a) Available from: Instagram.com (iamkb,
Kelly Brook), “Mind the Gap #Belfie,” April 21, 2014.
https://instagram.com/p/nEFkBZKZvL). (b) Available from:
Instagram.com (charleslawley, Charles Lawley), “A #belfast
#selfie, or a #belfie if you will,” August 25, 2014. https://
www.instagram.com/p/sH-9cdQCG_. Reproduced with
permission of the photographer 195
Fig. 10.1 (a, b): Selfie and screenshot of the selfie act on Huawei P8 Lite
(Android). Reproduced with permission of Carolin (2016).
(c, d): Selfie and screenshot of the selfie act on HTC One
Mini 2 (Android). Reproduced with permission of Isabelle
(2016)216
xx List of Figures
Fig. 10.2 Selfie folder on iPhone 6. Screenshot by Sabine Wirth (2016) 223
Fig. 10.3 Advertising campaign for the Sony Xperia™ C4 (Sony 2016).
Screenshot by Sabine Wirth. Available from: http://www.
sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-c4/
(accessedSeptember 15, 2016) 224
Fig. 10.4 Screenshots taken from Christoph Rehage’s video The
Longest Way 1.0—walk through China and grow a beard!—
a photo every day timelapse. Available from: YouTube.com
(Christoph Rehage), March 20, 2009. https://www.
youtube/5ky6vgQfU24 (accessed September 15, 2016) 231
Fig. 11.1 Screenshot taken from dahoam Is Dahoam. Video Selfie.
Holger M. Wilhelm. Available from: BR Fernsehen/BR
Mediathek, March 6, 2015. http://www.br.de/mediathek/video/
sendungen/dahoam-is-dahoam/selfie-portraet-holger-wil-
helm-gregor-brunner-100.html (accessed August 27, 2015) 243
Fig. 11.2 Screenshots taken from (a) A World of Conflict (Jeffrey
Porter, USA 2007) and (b, c) Episode III: Enjoy Poverty
(Renzo Martens, NLD 2008) 245
Fig. 11.3 (a, b) Screenshots taken from Adolf Winkelmann, Kassel
9.12.67 11.54h (Adolf Winkelmann, DEU 1967) and Blair
Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, USA
1999)249
Fig. 11.4 Images from the GoPro-marketing campaign introducing the
new HERO session. (a) Screenshot from the video GoPro HERO
Session: GoPro, Simplified. Available from: YouTube.com
(GoPro), July 6, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
PjGkVCAo8Fw. (b) GoPro marketing image. Available from:
https://www.morele.net/gopro-mocowanie-na-noge-lub-reke-
dla-gopro-ahwbm-001-768563 (both accessed March 20, 2017) 255
Fig. 12.1 Screenshot taken from Brandon Mikesell’s video GoPro:
Majestic Wingsuit Flight in Switzerland. Available from:
YouTube.com (GoPro), February 16, 2015. https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=IM1vss7FXs8 (accessed September 15, 2016) 262
Fig. 12.2 Willi Ruge: “Ich fotografierte dabei ...” (1931). Available
From: Burda, Franz, ed. 1953. 50 Jahre Motorflug, 200–201.
Offenburg: Burda Druck und Verlag 263
Fig. 12.3 US Patent 4530580 A: “Telescopic extender for supporting
compact camera” (1983, 4). Available from: https://docs.
google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.
com/pdfs/US4530580.pdf (accessed October 15, 2016) 270
List of Figures
xxi
Fig. 13.1 Mirror reflection of Gigapan (Google 2014). Available from:

Tumblr.com (the-camera-in-the-mirror), n.d. http://the-camera-
in-the-mirror.tumblr.com (accessed September 16, 2016) 289
Fig. 13.2 Selfies of curiosity sent to earth and shared on (a) Facebook and
(b) Twitter. (a) Available from: Facebook.com (@MarsCuriosity),
March 24, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/MarsCuriosity/
photos/a.133197436730240.23875.110938085622842/7921
79500832027/?type=3&theater. (b) Available from: Twitter.
com (@MarsCuriosity), October 13, 2015. https://twitter.com/
marscuriosity/status/653998124642406400 (both accessed
March 29, 2017) 292
Fig. 13.3 Hitchhiking Robot Hitchbot (Twitter profile image). Available
from: Twitter.com (@hitchBOT), n.d. https://twitter.com/
hitchBOT (accessed September 16, 2016) 296
Fig. 13.4 (a, b) Gigapan with and without its coat (Google 2014). Available
from: Tumblr.com (the-camera-in-the-mirror), n.d. http://the-
camera-in-the-mirror.tumblr.com (accessed September 16,
2016)298
Fig. 14.1 (a) A sample of purikura sticker sheets, scrapbook, and an
image box. Photo by Mette Sandbye (Tokyo, 2010). (b) Single
purikura image of Sayaka and friend. Reproduced with per-
mission of Sayaka. (c) Purikura photo of the author, which
demonstrates the machine’s predetermination of her face as a
“Manga face.” Photo by Mette Sandbye (Tokyo, 2010). (d)
Page from Sayaka’s purikura scrapbook, where Fig. b figures in
the middle. Reproduced with permission of Sayaka. (e) Page
from Asuka’s purikura scrapbook. Reproduced with permis-
sion of Asuka 312
Fig. 14.2 “Cutie” high school girl costume found in a department store
in Tokyo. Photo by Mette Sandbye (Tokyo, 2010) 320
Fig. 15.1 (a, b) Infant foot selfies 329
Fig. 15.2 (a–e) Screenshots from selfie videos made by children 339
Fig. 15.3 (a, b) Aural and graphic self-inscriptions 345
Fig. 16.1 Collection of selfies of “Hauptschülerinnen” (Berlin 2013).
Collected and arranged by Stefan Wellgraf 354
Fig. 16.2 Collection of selfies of “Hauptschüler” (Berlin 2013).
Collected and arranged by Stefan Wellgraf 355
1
The Selfie as Image (and) Practice:
Approaching Digital Self-Photography
Julia Eckel, Jens Ruchatz, and Sabine Wirth
Selfies are ubiquitous in online culture: Every frequent user of photo-

sharing platforms, social network sites, or smartphone apps such as
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Instagram, Snapfish, WhatsApp,
or Snapchat is familiar with these particular photographic images and most
likely has already produced a selfie (or many selfies) herself/himself. Since
the term “selfie” was chosen Word of the Year by the Oxford Dictionaries in
2013, it has become evident that taking and sharing selfies is not just some
temporary hype of web culture. Selfie pictures are apparently here to stay
and have taken their place among established photographic practices. The
prevalence of self-images among the pictures taken with mobile phone
cameras and subsequently uploaded on social media platforms had been
accounted for before the popularization of the term “selfie”, at least occa-
J. Eckel (*)
Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
J. Ruchatz • S. Wirth
Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
© The Author(s) 2018 1

J. Eckel et al. (eds.), Exploring the Selfie,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57949-8_1
2 J. Eckel et al.
sionally (Lasén 2005, 66; Walker 2005; Prøitz 2007; Lasén and Gómez-
Cruz 2009; Schwarz 2010; Rocamora 2011).1 In this context those pictures
were generally referred to as “self-portraits,” even though the term “selfie”
had already been coined. The first documented use of the word goes back
to 2002 (Oxford Dictionaries 2013; Zimmer 2013). The rapid implementa-
tion of the new term took place in media critical discourse,2 taking off in
2012 and culminating in it becoming 2013’s Word of the Year. This dis-
coursive event is not just an arbitrary exchange of one word for another
(selfie instead of self-portrait) but indicates the public awareness of an
image practice that had long gone mostly unnoticed. In addition, it seems
to indicate that selfie images taken with mobile phones differ so much from
traditional self-portraits as to merit a proper name. It can be argued that
with the success of the new nomenclature, the picture practice has turned
from an emerging genre (Lüders et al. 2010) into a full-fledged genre that
is recognized as particular to online culture. The general adoption of the
term “selfie” has been instrumental in the popularization of digital self-
images—as a photographic practice taken up by a majority of mobile phone
users and as a topic of discourses about photography and online media.
In Search for a Selfie Definition

Despite the prevalence of the word and the ubiquitous presence of selfie
pictures, it is not so easy to pinpoint what a selfie actually is and what the
practice of taking and sharing selfies tells us about today’s media use and
media culture. Therefore, it may be helpful to start by focusing on a phe-
nomenon that calls attention to some of the specifics of the selfie by chal-
lenging them at the same time: animal selfies. At the peak of the selfie
hype around 2012,3 so-called cat selfies and dog selfies started to appear.
A number of books and calendars containing such photos even were pub-
lished (Ellis 2014a, b, 2016; Trompka 2014). These pictures usually show
the animal extending its paw toward the lens of the camera, but just a bit
off as if it is pressing the release button of a camera phone (see Fig. 1.1).
Some animal owners claim that their cats or dogs are indeed capable of
taking veritable selfies themselves (Phillips Badal 2016).4 What qualifies
these pictures as selfies is, however, that they show the gesture that is
The Selfie as Image (and) Practice 3
Fig. 1.1 Collection of animal selfies

4 J. Eckel et al.
familiar from “human” selfies, a gesture that indicates that the subject
controlling the shutter release button of the camera is also the object of
the picture. Animal selfies can be considered as a self-reflexive pictorial
form insofar as they lay bare what visibly defines the typical selfie photo-
graph. They take recourse to the clearest generic marker that is needed to
render a photograph recognizable, even readable, as a selfie. Animal self-
ies highlight the status of the selfie as a “gestural picture,” to use Paul
Frosh’s words: The gesture “is simultaneously mediating (the outstretched
arm executes the taking of the selfie) and mediated (the outstretched arm
becomes a legible sign within selfies of, among other things, the selfieness
of the image)” (Frosh 2015, 1611, emphasis in original).
Thus, the question of what constitutes a selfie is a crucial one and, at
the same time, is not easy to answer. While images like animal selfies
contribute to the phenomenon on a practical and pictorial level, there
seems to be an urge to define the selfie on a terminological/discoursive
level as well. The most common and most frequently cited definition
found in the selfie discourse is the one quoted in the press release of the
Oxford Dictionaries (2013): “a photograph that one has taken of oneself,
typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a
social media website.”5 Since this definition repeatedly serves as a refer-
ence point within this volume and therefore offers a starting point to
analyze the basic ambiguity that troubles selfie research, we will have a
closer look at its different components in the next subsections.6
“A photograph that one has taken of oneself”
The definition leaves no doubt: Only photographs can count as selfies;

drawings or paintings as well as moving pictures are ruled out.7 Among
the plethora of photographs, selfies are those where the photographed
subject controls the photograph: Subject/author and object of the image
coincide.8 I myself have taken this photo of me, this is exactly what the
gesture of the extended arm in the selfie designates: “If both your hands
are in the picture and it’s not a mirror shot, technically, it’s not a selfie”
(Saltz 2014). The definition is vague and very extensive in another respect,
however: Any photographic picture that someone has taken of herself/
himself may be named a selfie, which includes analog as well as digital
photographs. It further encompasses photographs that do not show the
face9 of the photographer but, for instance, their backside (a bum selfie,
or belfie) or feet (a foot selfie, felfie or footfie).10 Likewise, a selfie may—
and often does—stage more people than just the photographer (and con-
sequently might be specified as usie, ussie, wefie, or groupfie). In this
respect, it is significant that the definition avoids the art historical termi-
nology of the self-portrait. A portrait in the strict sense is meant to not
only show parts of the bodily surface of a person at a certain point in time
but to pictorially express or capture the individual’s personal identity.11
Still, according to the first part of the definition, a self-portrait would also
count as a selfie as long as it is photographic.12
“taken with a smartphone or a webcam”
This part of the definition specifies the selfie as a form of digital imag-
ing.13 It is a qualification that certainly has to do with the fact that spe-
cific kinds of digital devices—smartphones or webcams—are expressly
built to picture their users. Especially front-facing cameras in smart-
phones that were introduced in 2003 with Sony Ericsson’s Z1010 and
incorporated into Apple’s iPhone in 2010 serve as an infrastructure for
self-imaging. Both were developed with a view to videotelephony, that is,
in order to transmit (and not record) moving (instead of static) images of
the user. The significantly inferior quality of these cameras is due to the
projected use. Thus, the remarkable improvement of the rear-facing cam-
era, reaching 7 megapixels with the iPhone 7 in 2016, can be considered
a reaction to its now-prevalent use as a photographic camera rather than
a videotelephonic interface. Today’s smartphones have therefore techno-
logically implemented and materially stabilized the photographic prac-
tice of the selfie.14 By including specific image technologies, the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) definition moreover stresses the particular
6 J. Eckel et al.
form in which the “photograph that one has taken of oneself ” nowadays
operates. The exposure is not started by a remote shutter release or a self-
timer but is consciously initiated by a camera operator who is controlling
his/her image on the display.
“uploaded to a social media website”
The final part of the definition testifies to the fundamental communicative

function of the selfie as a “connected” and “conversational” image: Social
media sites link shared photos of one user to photos of many others and even
invite them to react to an uploaded selfie by posting a selfie of their own
(Gunthert 2014).15 Hence, the practice of sharing selfies is at the core of a
new form of personal photography that is not private anymore, as family
snapshots stored in a photo album used to be, but a form that is directed
toward sharing pictures with others from the outset. The selfie may be con-
sidered as, in the words of André Gunthert, “perhaps the oldest identifiable
use of connected image[s].” (Gunthert 2014) Often selfies are taken with
anticipation of being shared on social media or via online messaging services.
Anja Dinhopl and Ulrike Gretzel (2016, 130) even declare the practice the
principal criterion, when they decide to understand selfies as “not confined
to one specific type of technology or a specific genre of photograph or video,
but as characterized by the desire to frame the self in a picture taken to be
shared with an online audience.” Within networked culture, digital images
are made and meant to be shared. The fact that selfies are technologically
tied to communication devices such as the webcam and the smartphone
underlines the nexus of camera phone pictures and communicative
exchange.16 This bias toward communication has brought about transforma-
tions in the temporality of photography. Once, personal photographs were
directed toward the past with the object of inducing and anchoring memo-
ries. On social media platforms, where the material basis of photography has
changed from photochemistry to digital code and electronic signals, it has
developed into a kind of “‘live’ medium” (Frosh 2015, 1609). “A conven-
tional photograph mediates […] from there-then to here-now,” Mikko Villi
(2015a, 16, emphasis in original) points out: “By, contrast, a photograph
sent from a camera phone immediately after capture can form a connection
between there-now and here-now.” (Villi 2015a, 16, emphasis in original)
“typically”
This seemingly marginal adverb of partial revocation is relevant because

it renders all subsequent specifications secondary and reduces the require-
ments for a selfie to the minimum of a self-photographic picture. Apart
from the “ideal type”—a selfie shot, taken with a smartphone/webcam
and shared online—there do exist a range of photographic self-
representations that nevertheless claim to be selfies. From this point of
view, a picture that is stored for memory purposes only and never shown
to others can be seen as a selfie too;17 as well as a cat selfie or dog selfie, a
robot or drone selfie, a video or time-lapse selfie, a felfie or belfie, et
cetera—all the images that are named and labeled selfies may be taken
into account as not typical but still eligible selfies.18
Furthermore, the hashtag or the term “selfie” is frequently applied to
portraits that are posted online but have obviously not been taken by the
person shown in the photograph. A good example for this wide reach,
which has been discussed by Matthew Bellinger (2015), is the photo of
former UK Prime Minister David Cameron that he shared on his Twitter
account on March 5, 2014, showing him on the phone while the posted
text is referring to a phone conversation with Barack Obama about
Russia’s annexation of Ukraine. Although the picture was obviously not a
selfie, it was labeled as such in various articles of mainstream news media
(Bellinger 2015, 1808). Like this example, the hashtag #selfie is fre-
quently used on social media platforms for photographs that are not self-
ies in the stricter sense of the OED definition. This form of tagging places
the self-communicating self above the self-picturing self:19 In this respect,
a selfie is a photograph showing myself that I have decided to share.
The opposite emphasis on the pictorial aspect of the definition comes
to the fore when “cat selfies” that could by no means have been uploaded
by the animal are designated as selfies, not just as their parody. The label
“selfie” has become so popular that its use has turned very vague. A thin
volume teaching the mise-en-scène of self-portraits with a digital camera
has changed its title from Shooting Yourself in 2013 to Selfie in 2014
(Kamps 2013, 2014). With regard to the labeling of portraits as selfies,
this case may look the same as using the hashtag #selfie, but the underly-
ing logic differs: On one hand, the communicative use of the picture
8 J. Eckel et al.
gives a reason for labeling a picture a selfie; on the other hand, the self-
photographic quality of the picture “taken by oneself ” justifies the label
selfie. These two aspects—communicative practice and aesthetic fea-
tures—intersect in the practice of the selfie. “Its logic,” Daniel Rubinstein
(2015, 173) contends, “does not distinguish between the act of ‘taking,’
‘making’ or ‘snapping’ and the act of uploading and sharing.” Yet there is
disagreement in selfie research as to which aspect is most important.
Rubinstein, for example, singles out “its instant shareability” as “the
defining quality of the selfie” (ibid.), and Gunthert (2014) equates the
conversational with a “[v]ictory of use over content” and reasons that the
“new visual practices cannot be analyzed only through the grid of aesthet-
ics.” Edgar Gómez Cruz and Helen Thornham (2015, 2) insist likewise
that the perfect pictorial representation of the individual is not the point
of the selfie—it is “the practices and contexts” that matter “rather than
the image ‘itself.’” Villi’s (2015b, 31) perspective emanates more from the
technology of the smartphone but nevertheless pleads that “selfie culture,
therefore[,] should be understood specifically by focusing on communi-
cation, social media, instant messaging services and camera phones rather
than studying it in the context of photography.” In contrast, Theresa
Senft and Nancy Baym (2015, 1589), editors of the special section
“Selfies” in the International Journal of Communication, conceptualize the
selfie as “a way of speaking” and conclude that “although there is no
denying the role technology has played in the rise of the selfie phenom-
enon, as communications theorists, we are more interested in the selfie as
cultural artifact and social practice.” And finally, Alise Tifentale (2016,
76) stresses the connection of both levels again when she develops her
concept of the “networked camera” with regard to technological condi-
tions but at the same time suggests “to understand the selfie as a hybrid
phenomenon that merges the aesthetics of photographic self-portraiture
with the social functions of online interpersonal communication.”20
Up to now, one can conclude, selfie research is shaped by these two
sometimes conflicting but often just as well complementary approaches
of focusing on the image (i.e., the technological and aesthetic dimensions
of the selfie) as opposed to focusing on image practices (i.e., the commu-
nicative and social dimensions of the selfie). To give another example,
this tension can also be traced in the first two monographs explicitly deal-
ing with selfies, both published in 2014: Brooke Wendt’s The Allure of the
Selfie: Instagram and the New Self-Portrait (2014, 18) reflects the changing
function of snapshot photography and how the notion of “self-perfection”
is historically conveyed in camera ads. Selfie practices are contextualized
as part of a networked culture, and the issue of identity formation, which
seems to be the key question of the book, is accompanied by an analysis
of aesthetic practices like the use of filters (25–30) and patterns of facial
expression in the history of photographic self-portraiture (38–44). Jill
Walker Rettberg’s Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies,
Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves contextualizes selfies
among other modes of self-presentation and self-quantification in online
media and offers a more critical view on the issue of big data and surveil-
lance. Similar to Wendt’s approach, Rettberg stresses the question of
identity formation and locates selfies within the longer history of media
of self-representation (2004, 2–19).
In contrast to all these academic attempts to localize selfie practice
within the history of photography and web culture, the public debate in
print and online media was (and is) strongly driven by an interpretation
of the selfie as a symptom of narcissism21 and selfishness22 and is thus
more oriented toward the questions why people take selfies, what these
photos (are allowed to) depict, and how the sheer quantity of selfies is to
be understood. From the beginning, the public debate has been fueled by
fears of the presumed dangers of selfie culture: Popular books like UnSelfie:
Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World (Borba 2016)
even attest the selfie a somewhat monstrous status, converting it into a
nonword that is used as a pars pro toto to summarize all problematic
aspects of children’s life in a digital media world. The “Selfie Syndrome,”
as Borba calls it, “is all about self-promotion, personal branding, and self-
interest at the exclusion of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns.” (xv)
News articles claiming to prove a connection between selfie culture and
mental illness by referring to supposedly scientific or medical/therapeutic
statements have pushed this debate toward supporting a pathologization
of selfie culture.23 But as Senft and Baym (2015, 1590) point out, “to
date, we have not seen a single peer-reviewed piece of scientific literature
that convincingly demonstrates that selfie production and mental illness
are correlated.”24 Rather, they oppose the discourses of pathology
10 J. Eckel et al.
s urrounding the selfie phenomenon by suggesting a scholarly and activist

understanding of selfie practices (1589–1590). Until now most of the
publications that have worked against the simplification of the selfie as a
symptom of narcissism and (most often female)25 self-exposure are
counted among the fields of Cultural Studies, Cultural Anthropology,
and Sociology with a strong emphasis on topics such as gender and self-
empowerment (e.g., Walker 2005; Albury 2015; Hampton 2015; Senft
2015; Tiidenberg and Gómez Cruz 2015; Duguay 2016), subjectivity
and identity (e.g., Charteris et al. 2014), class (Nemer and Freeman
2015), teen culture (Ringrose and Harvey 2015), social regulation and
repressive normativity (Boon and Pentney 2015; Burns 2015; Meese
et al. 2015), or political action (Coladonato 2014). A critical stance
locates the selfie among practices of self-improvement, self-marketing,
and self-branding that are imposed on the individual under the condi-
tions of neoliberalism. From this perspective, posting selfies looks less like
a form of empowerment than a form of commodification of the self
(Schwarz 2010; Schroeder 2013; Wright 2015; Abidin 2016). Whereas
the first scholarly publications about selfies were anchored in the ques-
tion of self-representation, the focus has quickly shifted toward a descrip-
tion of the diverse practices selfie snappers are engaged in so as to counter
the interpretation of selfies as isolated images. Ethnographic research
projects have highlighted that the selfie is to be understood not only as a
means of self-representation or a representational image but rather as a
form of communication that is bound to specific social as well as
technological conditions (Gómez Cruz and Thornham 2015). The focus
on users and practices is continued in publications that contextualize self-
ies in network culture, for instance, describing selfies as a genre within
the broader context of meme culture (Bellinger 2015). Yet it has become
increasingly clear that studies about selfies as social practice equally need
to reflect the technological conditions of these forms of media use, such
as the parameters of apps, computing devices like smartphones, and (big)
data flows. As the Selfiecity project, initiated by Lev Manovich and his
team in 2013, has demonstrated, the sheer mass of pictures challenges
established approaches in the humanities and social sciences and calls for
methodological extensions toward Software Studies, big data analysis,
and new visualization tools (Tifentale 2015, 50–51).
During the conference on which this volume is based,26 these opposing

views regarding what constitutes a selfie and which of its aspects have to
be taken into account when researching it were intensely debated: Is it
possible to understand the selfie as a visual entity, a picture, a pictorial
genre, or even a subgenre of the photographic self-portrait? And can the
selfie therefore be put to an image critique? Or is the pictorial aspect
always secondary to the conversational use, to the contextualization of
the picture in a communicative context?
In order to cover this controversy and further the understanding of the
selfie, this collection follows different objectives. First, the chapters strive
to establish a historical context for an evaluation of the specifics of the
selfie as a picture and a particular phenomenon of network culture; sec-
ond, they offer theoretical concepts and models in order to understand
the selfie as a representation of an individual and a pictorial artifact, on
one hand, and as a practice of communication and the social production
of the self, on the other. Finally, the chapters provide analytical insights
into selected fields in the vast space of selfie practices, like selfies taken by
kids and teenagers, in different countries and social contexts.27
In order to provide systematic orientation, the chapters have been
arranged in four sections.
The aim of Section 1 is to situate the selfie within the field of media
history and theory, debating to what extent the selfie can be understood
as a (re-)iteration or transformation of established forms of self-portraiture
and self-photography. André Gunthert traces a social history of the selfie
and discusses the reasons for its belated recognition as an important and
widespread, but at the same time supposedly socially and psychologically
harmful image practice. Jens Ruchatz focuses on the self-reflexive poten-
tials of the selfie by dealing with a phenomenon that seems to be strongly
connected and even accountable for the selfie hype: not the selfie itself
but photographs of people taking selfies. Kris Belden-Adams addresses
the selfie from an art history perspective by searching for potential prede-
cessors in the field of self-portraiture and self-photography. This art his-
torical focus is widened in Angela Krewani’s chapter by connecting the
selfie to the self-monitoring features of video technology and especially
its use in video art and installations.
12 J. Eckel et al.
The next three sections pay special attention to the aforementioned

tension between approaches focusing on the selfie as image and on its
technological conditions and those addressing it as practice and social
habit. All three sections incorporate both aspects by—in slightly differing
ways—focusing on the selfie as a relation between a concept of the “self ”
(understood as a dynamic discoursive construct) and its appearance on/
through displays (understood as technical devices as well as processes of
showing). This differentiation is not to be interpreted as a(nother) clear-
cut separation of rivaling stances but rather as a vibrant field of argumen-
tative positions that are (as the review of current selfie research has shown)
always intermingled and therefore inseparable when it comes to selfie
culture. The variations in the connection of self and display in the section
titles point to these different dimensions of relationality: Section 2, “The
Displayed Self,” focuses on the selfie as an aesthetic object and networked
image, which is characterized by a self being displayed, constituted, and
dealt with through a photographic image and additionally through its
social media c ontexts. Section 3, “The Self on Display,” shifts the focus a
bit more toward the technological conditions of selfie culture, the disposi-
tif that it stems from and that is invoked by it, since it is (typically) a digi-
tal image that is bound to the factual display of a technological device in
order to be visible and operable for users. The final section, “Displaying
the Self,” addresses the processuality of the selfie as an act of displaying,
thus pointing to its subjective, social, and cultural dimensions and its
relevance as a stereotypical as well as creative and playful practice of deal-
ing with (our)selves and technologies.
Section 2—“The Displayed Self ”—starts with a chapter by Hagi
Kenaan, who explores the connection between selfie and face from a
philosophical perspective, raising questions of how the changes in the
visuality of the face induced by the selfie—as a contemporary mode of
inter-facing and facing oneself—may lead to changes in concepts of iden-
tity. Julia Eckel’s contribution deals with the topic of identity as well: By
discussing the “displayed authorship” of the selfie, which seems to be
essential for its definition, and by connecting it to the Foucauldian con-
cept of the “author function,” she outlines the potential of the selfie to
visually negotiate ideas of “the subject” in digital, networked societies.
The authorial gesture of the selfie is also the focus of Alise Tifentale and
Lev Manovich, who discuss the aesthetics and usage of self-photographs

on Instagram by applying the concept of competitive versus noncompeti-
tive photography to them (in contrast to the more widespread
professional/amateur distinction). These terms allow to identify different
“photographic habits” that are inscribed in the images themselves and
their contextualization—for example, with the phenomenon of the anti-
selfie. Bernd Leiendecker likewise addresses the contexts of selfies by
consulting different theories of genre. Dealing with the genre categoriza-
tion not only of the selfie as such but of its subgenres (e.g., belfie, felfie,
etc.) opens a possibility for better understanding what selfies are and how
their own logics of production, distribution, and reception work.
In Section 3—“The Self on Display”—Sabine Wirth highlights how
the process of taking a selfie is always entangled in the dispositif of (per-
sonal) computer interfaces and how specific types of temporality evolve
from this embeddedness, suggesting that the selfie as a p rocessual/proce-
dural image always oscillates between seriality and singularity. The tem-
porality of the selfie becomes relevant again when Florian Krautkrämer
and Matthias Thiele take a closer look at video recording and the “selfie
modes” that the moving image of film and television has developed, thus
challenging and shaping the borders of the typical selfie definition. The
same applies to the contribution of Winfried Gerling, who focuses on
the GoPro, a special camera type, and the historical as well as contempo-
rary aesthetics associated with the “body bound camera.” Another selfie
phenomenon that inevitably points to the role of technology—on both
sides of the camera—is the robot selfie, which is discussed by Lisa Gotto.
By dealing with Google’s museum robot Gigapan and NASA’s Mars rover
Curiosity and the images they produce—in a strange and automated,
purely techno/self-centered manner—Gotto reflects on the embedded-
ness of the selfie into contexts of self-knowledge within a machine age.
The questioning of the self(ie)-potential of robots as—maybe—
humanlike agents thus leads to Section 4—“Displaying the Self ”—which
pays special attention to social, cultural, and political implications of
selfie practice. Mette Sandbye takes the purikura phenomenon, a photo
booth practice especially established in Japan, as a model to explore the
seemingly stereotypical and mainstreaming structures of selfie produc-
tion on one hand and their potential for creative and playful negotiations
14 J. Eckel et al.
of these conformities on the other. Alexandra Schneider and Wanda

Strauven focus on the visual and acoustical self-recording practices of
children, which are productively challenging the definition of the selfie
again by being used and shared only in more self- and family-centered
contexts and which are in some cases produced without the self-aware-
ness normally ascribed to the selfie. Selfies as tools of a growing self-
awareness and for conceptualizing and building one’s identity (in a digital
and networked society) are relevant not only for children but for teenag-
ers especially. Stefan Wellgraf addresses the photographic self-images of
German “Hauptschüler,” pupils who often grow up in socially and finan-
cially disadvantaged families, from an ethnographic perspective and
highlights how the self-images produced in these contexts are intertwined
with questions of class, race, and gender.
In summary, the chapters in this volume clearly point out that explor-
ing selfies and selfie culture requires an interdisciplinary approach. The
book therefore gathers contributions from the fields of Media Studies,
Art History, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Philosophy, Sociology, and
Ethnography, providing an overview of the different positions between
the two main approaches of selfie research (focusing on the image as well
as aesthetic and technological questions versus focusing on practices and
sociocultural dimensions) and attempts to reconcile them. Although the
methodology of the selected chapters differs, their compilation in one
volume produces insights that could be summarized under the term
“media archaeology” (Huhtamo and Parikka 2011): most articles try to
grasp the selfie—as a phenomenon of contemporary digital culture—by
taking media history into consideration and contextualizing the current
practice within various media genealogies of pictorial self-representation
as well as of practices of communication, sharing, and participation. The
aim is to provide a theoretical as well as a media-historical framework for
investigating the selfie as an image practice—understood literally as image
and practice at the same time—and to develop a more specific theoretical
and analytic terminology. The challenge here is to describe the specifics of
the selfie and its exceptional status as well as the traits it shares with prac-
tices within “old” and “new” media. We neither want to posit that the
selfie is all new and can be understood only in relation to today’s network
culture nor to claim that everything the selfie is and does has been there
before. Selfie practices shall be compared to as well as differentiated from
older media practices of self-portraiture or technologies of the self and
can serve as a starting point for exploring recent developments of web
culture and the history of snapshot photography on a broader scale.
Notes
1. Even the aesthetics of snapping “at arm’s length,” which is often used to
define the selfie (e.g., Saltz 2014; Frosh 2015), is explicitly mentioned
(e.g., Lasén and Gómez-Cruz 2009, Fn 7; Lüders et al. 2010, 958 and
959; Schwarz 2010, 168).
2. For an account of the discoursive rise of the selfie to popularity, see
Chap. 2 by André Gunthert in this volume.
3. TIME magazine, for example, mentioned the word “selfie” as number 9
of the “Top 10 Buzzwords 2012,” explaining that “it wasn’t until 2012
that a name for these self-portraits, typically made to post on a social
networking website (or send in a text message), really hit the big time”
(Steinmetz 2012).
4. The cat’s Instagram account can be found via https://www.instagram.
com/yoremahm (accessed September 16, 2016).
5. See also the very similar definition of the Oxford Living Dictionaries
(n.d.): “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken
with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media”; or the one
by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED 2014): “A photographic self-
portrait; esp. one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via
social media.”
6. For a critical review of the same definition focusing on a particular genre
of selfies, the kid selfie, see Chap. 15 by Alexandra Schneider and Wanda
Strauven in this volume.
7. Although the OED definition excludes moving images, some of the
chapters in this volume show how fruitful addressing the so-called video
selfie can be for comprehending the selfie (see Chaps. 5 by Angela
Krewani, 12 by Winfried Gerling, and 11 by Florian Krautkrämer and
Matthias Thiele).
8. Julia Eckel, for instance, deals with these questions of authorship in
Chap. 7 in this volume.
16 J. Eckel et al.
9. For a philosophical perspective on the nevertheless striking relevance of

the face (in the selfie), see Chap. 6 by Hagi Kenaan in this volume.
10. The prominence of foot selfies shows in the installation My Feet by
Dutch artist Erik Kessels (Bieber 2015, 194–197).
11. For Droitcour (2013, n.p.), for example, this is the reason why “[a] selfie
is not a portrait. A portrait is a flat monument. Like a bust or a full-body
statue, a portrait (whether painted on canvas or shot by a photographer)
partially extracts the sitter from her life. Portraiture asserts the sitter’s sig-
nificance—it says she deserves to be inscribed in history. A great portrait,
whether painted or photographed, conveys its maker’s awareness of his
task and the contradictions inherent in it: the promise and the impossibil-
ity of immortality. A great portrait reveals the ripeness and vulnerability of
the sitter’s body, both in the way it depicts his flesh and in the inclusion of
a memento mori, wilting flowers, or some fruit about to rot. Time will kill
him. His image will outlive him. The same is true for the self-portrait: the
artist has to find a distance from herself, to step outside her body in order
to think about its mortality. A selfie is not monumental. It doesn’t inscribe
its maker in history; it inscribes him in a networked present.” For another
art historical perspective on the parallels and differences between selfies
and self-portraits, see Chap. 4 by Kris Belden-Adams in this volume.
12. Critical views of the selfie emphasize the opposite (e.g., Judge 2014).
13. For some the identification of a selfie as a photographic picture might be
under dispute, since they claim that digital images should be considered
“post-photographic,” as the ontological basis has shifted from photo-
chemistry to digital electronics (Mitchell 1994; von Amelunxen et al.
1996).
14. Sabine Wirth, for instance, discusses the selfie as a default setting of
smartphones and an interface practice in Chap. 10 in this volume.
15. How this leads to the development of (sub)genres of the selfie is traced
by Bernd Leiendecker in Chap. 9 in this volume.
16. As Gunthert (2014) points out: “Connected photography is a result of
the association between the smartphone and communication networks.”
17. When Helle Thorning-Schmidt, David Cameron, and Barack Obama
used the Danish prime minister’s smartphone to take a picture during
the Nelson Mandela obsequies in December 2013, the fact that they had
taken a selfie (or ‘ussie’) was inferred from their behavior alone, whereas
none of the many critical commentators had ever laid eyes on the picture
itself, which, still, was unanimously considered a selfie (Miltner and
Baym 2015; Ruchatz 2016). See also Chap. 3 by Jens Ruchatz in this
volume.
18. Alise Tifentales and Lev Manovich’s thoughts on the “anti-selfie” in
Chap. 8 in this volume deal with these aspects, as does Chap. 13 on
robot selfies by Lisa Gotto.
19. Giacomo Di Foggia (2015) even strengthens this idea by focusing on the
“anti-figurativeness” of the selfie and by arguing that “the context in
which these self-portraying pictures are taken, as well as the online and
social environment in which they are shared, are more important than
the self-portrayed subjects themselves. The hashtag ‘#’, in fact, indicates
the centrality of the tag, the gesture of tagging, which is considerably
more important than the fact of being self-portrayed through the #selfie.”
20. This ambivalence of the selfie as picture and communication practice
does in fact already emerge before the peak of the selfie debate in
2012/2013. In 2009, Lasén and Gómez Cruz investigated how the nude
self-presentation in mobile phone photographs was renegotiating the
private/public distinction, when it was uploaded to the Web or used for
sexting. However, by clinging to the term “digital self photography” in
more recent publications, Lasén is relegating the term “selfie” to a syn-
onym or subcategory of photographic self-portraiture (Lasén 2015, 63;
Lasén and García 2015, 717). This semantic preference betrays that the
pictorial tradition is more relevant to her approach than the new context
of communication and sharing.
21. See, for example, Chamorro-Premuzic (2014), Malcore (2015), Seidman
(2015), or Wagner (2015).
22. The well-known photo book published by Kim Kardashian West in
2015 for example bears the title Selfish. With this title the selection that
contains not only but mostly selfies ironically refers to this debate about
narcissism but at the same time presents “selfishness” as a positive mar-
keting skill of the author.
23. The article “Science Links Selfies to Narcisissm, Addiction and Low Self
Esteem,” published on Adweek.com (Barakat 2014), can serve as one of
many examples of the discourse of selfie-pathology. Nancy Baym and
Teresa Senft (2015, 1590) highlight the problematic “scientification” of
such statements.
24. Empirical psychological research, however, appears willing to consider
the nexus of the selfie to narcissism worth testing at least and tries to
provide confirmation for the assumed relation (e.g., Halpern et al. 2016;
Sorokowski et al. 2016; Barry et al. 2017).
18 J. Eckel et al.
25. A telling example for this seemingly unquestioned connection between

womanhood, narcissism, and the selfie is an Amazon e-book (of 32
pages) by Karen Shields entitled Selfie: Dealing with Today’s Narcissistic
Woman. Protect Your Emotions and Manhood (Shields 2015). Interestingly,
the main title “Selfie” seems to have been added to the online description
only afterward, because although the book’s cover shows a picture of a
woman taking a selfie, the word “selfie” is missing in the title (see https://
www.amazon.com/Selfie-Narcissistic-Self-Centered-self-involved-
conceited-ebook/dp/B00ROOPIKM, accessed September 16, 2016).
26. The conference was entitled “#SELFIE—Imag(in)ing the Self in Digital
Media” and took place in Marburg, Germany, in April 2015. Further
information can be found via https://www.uni-marburg.de/selfie
27. See Chaps. 14 by Mette Sandbye, 15 by Alexandra Schneider and Wanda
Strauven, and 16 by Stefan Wellgraf in this volume.
Bibliography
Abidin, Crystal. 2016. Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain
Things Online? Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity. Social Media+Society
2 (2): 1–17.
Albury, Kath. 2015. Selfies, Sexts and Sneaky Hats: Young People’s Understanding
of Gendered Practices of Self-Representation. International Journal of
Communication 9: 1734–1745. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/
view/3132/1396.
von Amelunxen, Hurbertus, Stefan Iglhaut, and Florian Rötzer, eds. 1996.
Photography after Photography. Memory and Represenstaion in the Digital Age.
München: G+B.
Barakat, Christie. 2014. Science Links Selfies to Narcissism, Addiction, and
Low Self Esteem. Adweek.com, April 16. Accessed August 27, 2016. http://
www.adweek.com/socialtimes/selfies-narcissism-addiction-low-self-
esteem/147769
Barry, Christopher T., Hannah Doucette, Della C. Loflin, Nicole Rivera-
Hudson, and Lacey L. Herrington. 2017. ‘Let Me Take a Selfie’: Associations
Between Self-Photography, Narcissism, and Self-Esteem. Psychology of Popular
Media Culture 6 (1): 48–60. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000089.
Bellinger, Matthew. 2015. Bae Caught Me Tweetin’: On the Representational
Stance of the Selfie. International Journal of Communication 9: 1806–1817.
http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3135/1401.
Bieber, Alain, ed. 2015. Ego Update: The Future of Digital Identity. Düsseldorf:
NRW-Forum.
Boon, Sonja, and Beth Pentney. 2015. Virtual Lactivism: Breastfeeding Selfies
and the Performance of Motherhood. International Journal of Communication
9: 1759–1774. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3136/1398.
Borba, Michele. 2016. UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-
About-Me World. New York, NY: Touchstone.
Burns, Anne. 2015. Self(ie)-Discipline: Social Regulation as Enacted Through
the Discussion of Photographic Practice. International Journal of Communication
Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. 2014. Sharing the (Self ) Love: The Rise of the
Selfie and Digital Narcissism. Theguardian.com, March 13. Accessed August
30, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-
blog/2014/mar/13/selfie-social-media-love-digital-narcassism
Charteris, Jennifer, Sue Gregory, and Yvonne Masters. 2014. Snapchat ‘Selfies’:
The Case of Disappearing Data. In Rhetoric and Reality: Critical Perspectives on
Educational Technology. Proceedings ASCILITE Dunedin 2014, ed. Bronwyn
Hegarty, Jenny McDonald, and Swee-Kin Loke, 389–393. Dunedin.: http://
www.ascilite.org/conferences/dunedin2014/files/concisepapers/47-Charteris.
pdf
Coladonato, Valerio. 2014. Power, Gender, and the Selfie. The Cases of Hillary
Clinton, Barack Obama, Pope Francis. Comunicazioni Sociali 3: 394–405.
Di Foggia, Giacomo. 2015. About the Anti-Figurativeness of #Selfie. (Location
of #Selfie). Networking Knowledge 8 (6), Special Issue: Be Your Selfie; November
2015. http://ojs.meccsa.org.uk/index.php/netknow/article/view/400
Dinhopl, Anja, and Ulrike Gretzel. 2016. Selfie-Taking as Touristic Looking.
Annals of Tourism Research 57: 126–139.
Droitcour, Brian. 2013. A Selfie Is Not a Portrait. Culturetwo.wordpress.com,
October 24. Accessed August 30, 2016. https://culturetwo.wordpress.
com/2013/10/24/a-selfie-is-not-a-portrait
Duguay, Stefanie. 2016. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Visibility
through Selfies. Comparing Platform Mediators Across Ruby Roses Instagram
and Vine Presence. Social Media+Society 2 (2): 1–12. https://doi.
org/10.1177/2056305116641975.
Ellis, Charlie. 2014a. Cat Selfies. Chichester: Summersdale.
———. 2014b. Dog Selfies. Chichester: Summersdale.
———. 2016. Animal Selfies. Chichester: Summersdale.
20 J. Eckel et al.
Frosh, Paul. 2015. The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory, and
Kinaesthetic Sociability. International Journal of Communication 9:
1607–1628. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3146/1388.
Gómez Cruz, Edgar, and Helen Thornham. 2015. Selfies Beyond Self-
Representation: The (Theoretical) F(r)ictions of a Practice. Journal of Aesthetics
& Culture 7 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v7.28073.
Gunthert, André. 2014. The Conversational Image. New Uses for Digital
Photography. Études Photographiques 31. Accessed September 16, 2016.
http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3546
Halpern, Daniel, Sebastián Valenzuela, and James E. Katz. 2016. ‘Selfie-ists’ or
‘Narci-selfiers’?: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis of Selfie Taking and
Narcissism. Personality and Individual Differences 97: 98–101. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.03.019.
Hampton, Claire. 2015. #nomakeupselfies. The Face of Hashtag Slacktivism.
Networking Knowledge 8 (6): 1–14. http://ojs.meccsa.org.uk/index.php/net-
know/article/view/406.
Huhtamo, Erkki, and Jussi Parikka, eds. 2011. Media Archaeology. Approaches,
Applications, and Implications. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Judge, Jenny. 2014. A Rembrandt’s Lessons for the Selfie Era: Why We Must Learn
to Look Again. Theguardian.com, October 16. Accessed September 16, 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/16/rembrandt-selfie-era-
self-portrait
Kamps, Haje Jan. 2013. Shooting Yourself. Self-Portrait Photography with Attitude.
Cincinatti: How Books.
———. 2014. Selfies. Self-Portrait Photography with Attitude. Cincinatti: How
Books.
Kardashian West, Kim. 2015. Selfish. New York, NY: Universe/Rizzoli.
Lasén, Amparo. 2005. Understanding Mobile Phone Users and Usage. Edited by Phil
Gosset. Newsbury: Vodafone Group R&D. (Wireless Studies 4). http://eprints.
ucm.es/6477/1/WFS4_UnderstandingMobilePhoneUsersAndUsage.pdf
———. 2015. Digital Self-Portraits, Exposure and the Modulation of Intimacy.
In Mobile and Digital Communication: Approaches to Public and Private, ed.
José Ricardo Carvalheiro and Ana Serrano Tellería, 61–78. Covilhã: LabCom.
http://www.labcom-ifp.ubi.pt/ficheiros/20150707-2015_12_public_pri-
vate.pdf.
Lasén, Amparo, and Antonio García. 2015. ‘But I Haven’t Got a Body to Show’:
Self-Pornification and Male Mixed Feeling in Digitally Mediated Seduction
Practices. Sexualities 18 (5/6): 714–730.
Lasén, Amparo, and Edgar Gómez-Cruz. 2009. Digital Photography and

Picture Sharing: Redefining the Public/Private Divide. Knowledge, Technology
& Policy 22 (3): 205–215.
Lüders, Marika, Lin Prøitz, and Terje Rasmussen. 2010. Emerging Personal
Media Genres. New Media & Society 12 (6): 947–963.
Malcore, Paul. 2015. Selfie Obsession: The Rise of Social Media Narcissism.
Rawhide.org, December 29. Accessed August 30, 2016. http://www.rawhide.
org/blog/infographics/selfie-obsession-the-rise-of-social-media-narcissism
Meese, James, Martin Gibbs, Marcus Carter, Michael Arnold, Bjorn Nansen,
and Tamara Kohn. 2015. Selfies at Funerals: Mourning and Presencing on
Social Media Platforms. International Journal of Communication 9:
1647–1659. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3154/1402.
Miltner, Kate M., and Nancy K. Baym. 2015. The Selfie of the Year of the Selfie.
International Journal of Communication 9: 1701–1715. http://ijoc.org/index.
php/ijoc/article/view/3244/1394.
Mitchell, William J. 1994. The Reconfigured Eye. Visual Truth in the Post-
Photographic Era. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nemer, David, and Guo Freeman. 2015. Empowering the Marginalized:
Rethinking Selfies in the Slums of Brazil. International Journal of Communication
Oxford Dictionaries. 2013. The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 Selfie.
(Press Releases—Word of the Year), November 19. Accessed August 30, 2016.
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/press-releases/oxford-dictionaries-
word-of-the-year-2013
Oxford English Dictionary. 2014. Selfie. Accessed September 16, 2016. http://
www.oed.com/view/Entry/390063?redirectedFrom=selfie#eid
Oxford Living Dictionaries. n.d. Selfie. Accessed September 16, 2016. https://
en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/selfie
Phillips Badal, Kelly. 2016. This Cat Rules at Taking Selfies. They’re Better Than
Yours. Yahoo! News, January 25. Accessed April 2, 2017. https://www.yahoo.
com/news/this-cat-rules-at-taking-1349005184524342.html
Prøitz, Lin. 2007. Mobile Media and Genres of the Self. In Ambivalence Towards
Convergence. Digitalisation and Media Change, ed. Tanja Storsul and Dagny
Stuedahl, 199–216. Göteborg: Nordicom.
Rettberg, Jill Walker. 2014. Seeing Ourselves through Technology: How We Use
Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Ringrose, Jessica, and Laura Harvey. 2015. Boobs, Back-Off, Six Packs and Bits:
Mediated Body Parts, Gendered Reward, and Sexual Shame in Teens’ Sexting
22 J. Eckel et al.
Images. Continuum 29 (2): 205–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.20

15.1022952.
Rocamora, Agnès. 2011. Personal Fashion Blogs: Screens and Mirrors in Digital
Self-Portraits. Fashion Theory 15 (4): 407–424.
Rubinstein, Daniel. 2015. Gift of the Selfie. In Ego Update: The Future of Digital
Identity, ed. Alain Bieber, 163–175. Düsseldorf: NRW-Forum.
Ruchatz, Jens. 2016. Fotografien des Fotografierens. Von einem ungesehenen
Selfie. Rundbrief Fotografie 23 (1): 4–7.
Saltz, Jerry. 2014. Art at Arm’s Length. A History of the Selfie. Vulture.com,
January 26. Accessed September 16, 2016. http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/
history-of-the-selfie.html
Schroeder, Jonathan. 2013. Snapshot Aesthetics and the Strategic Imagination.
Journal of Visible Culture 18. http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/
snapshot-aesthetics-and-the-strategic-imagination.
Schwarz, Ori. 2010. On Friendship, Boobs and the Logic of the Catalogue.
Online Self-Portraits as a Means for the Exchange of Capital. Convergence 16
(2): 163–183.
Seidman, Gwendolyn. 2015. What Is the Real Link Between Selfies and
Narcissism? Psychology Today, August 6. Accessed August 30, 2016. https://
w w w. p s y c h o l o g y t o d a y. c o m / b l o g / c l o s e - e n c o u n t e r s / 2 0 1 5 0 8 /
what-is-the-real-link-between-selfies-and-narcissism
Senft, Theresa M. 2015. The Skin of the Selfie. In Ego Update: The Future of
Digital Identity, ed. Alain Bieber, 134–161. Düsseldorf: NRW-Forum.
Senft, Theresa M., and Nancy K. Baym. 2015. What Does the Selfie Say:
Investigating a Global Phenomenon. International Journal of Communication
Shields, Karen. 2015. Selfie: Dealing with Today’s Narcissistic Woman. Protect Your
Emotions and Manhood. Kindle ed. Seattle, WA: Amazon Digital Services LLC.
Sorokowski, Piotr, Agnieszka Sorokoswki, Ania Oleszkiewicz, Tomasz
Frackowiak, Anna Maria Huk, and Katarzyna Pisanskia. 2016. Selfie Posting
Behaviors are Associated with Narcissism Among Men. Personality and
Individual Differences 85: 123–127.
Steinmetz, Katy. 2012. Top 10 Everything of 2012. Top 10 Buzzwords. 9. Selfie.
Time.com, December 4. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/04/top-10-news-
lists/slide/selfie
Tifentale, Alise. 2015. Making Sense of the Selfie: Digital Image-Making and
Image-Sharing in Social Media. Scriptus Manet 1: 47–59.
———. 2016. The Networked Camera at Work: Why Every Self-Portrait Is

Not a Selfie, but Every Selfie Is a Photograph. In Riga Photography Biennial
2016, ed. Santa Mičule, 74–83. Riga: Riga Photography Biennial.
Tiidenberg, Katrin, and Edgar Gómez Cruz. 2015. Selfies, Image and the
Re-Making of the Body. Body & Society 21 (4): 77–102. https://doi.org/10.1
177/1357034X15592465.
Trompka, Hansi. 2014. Hunde Selfies. # styler. München: Riva.
Villi, Mikko. 2015a. ‘Hey, I’m Here Right Now’. Camera Phone Photographs
and Mediated Presence. Photographies 8 (1): 3–21.
———. 2015b. The Selfie Connects. The Smart View. Reflections on Mobile
Photography 1: 30–31.
Wagner, Eric T. 2015. Selfie Society: Narcissism and the Celebration of Mediocrity.
Montreal: Pressbooks.
Walker, Jill. 2005. Mirrors and Shadows: The Digital Aestheticisation of Onself.
In The Proceedings of Digital Arts and Culture, 185–190. Copenhagen: IT
University of Copenhagen. https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/1136.
Wendt, Brooke. 2014. The Allure of the Selfie—Instagram and the New Self-
Portrait. (=Network Notebooks #08). Amsterdam: Institute of Network
Cultures.
Wright, Ellen. 2015. Watch the Birdie: The Star Economy, Social Media and the
Celebrity Group Selfie. Networking Knowledge 8 (6). http://ojs.meccsa.org.
uk/index.php/netknow/article/view/403.
Zimmer, Ben. 2013. No, a Drunken Australian Man Did Not Coin the Word
Selfie. Lex•i•con Valley, January 22. Accessed April 2, 2017. http://www.slate.
com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2013/11/22/selfie_etymology_an_australian_
man_takes_a_photo_of_his_lip_after_falling.html
Part I
The Selfie in Media Theory and
History
2
The Consecration of the Selfie:
A Cultural History
André Gunthert
Just before leaving on a weekend, after stowing their luggage in the trunk
of their car, Thelma and Louise, in Ridley Scott’s eponymous film from
1991, make what at the time nobody yet called a selfie. If this cult film
bears any credit for its ethnographic quality, what is striking is the speed
and spontaneity with which the two women lend themselves to this
exercise.
Not in the least hesitant, Louise (Susan Sarandon) seizes the Polaroid
camera, holds it at arm’s length, and gets closer to her friend, Thelma
(Geena Davis), who also immediately adopts the appropriate pose (see
Fig. 2.1). This brief interlude of a few seconds, perfectly reconstructed by
the film crew, seems to indicate that the act of situated self-photography1
is already commonplace.
Its use in the beginning of this road movie can be interpreted both as
a symbol of the couple’s union and as a sign of independence of the two
women, of whom no man takes a picture in their place. In this film,
A. Gunthert (*)
Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, France
© The Author(s) 2018 27

J. Eckel et al. (eds.), Exploring the Selfie,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57949-8_2
28 A. Gunthert
Fig. 2.1 Screenshot from Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, USA 1991)
remembered for its feminism (Projansky 2001, 130–162), the inaugural

Polaroid functions as a joyous signal of reclaiming independence.
These indications immediately isolate this image from the classic self-
portrait, traditionally reserved for representing a single individual, and
from its narcissism. As through the presence of the protagonists of the
action, the genre is defined by the self-production of the image but also
by its highly situated dimension. What Thelma and Louise immortalize
is the portrait of a moment and an experience, the beginning of the trip
that reunites them, in a photograph that bears their visual signature, both
through their presence in the picture and by its self-made nature. A final
shot shows the Polaroid blowing away in the wind just before the two
women’s car plunges into the ravine.
All these characteristics summarize a discrete use, which already seems
to be largely in line with practices. Even in the absence of an official iden-
tification, its cinematographic mention qualifies as a certificate of
acknowledgment and indicates that it is sufficiently recognizable to be
mobilized as an emblem (as demonstrated by the widespread distribution
of the promotional photograph reproducing the scene). However, the rise
of this gesture in its digital version would be necessary so that the selfie
becomes the photographic practice most representative of contemporary
visual expression.
The Consecration of the Selfie: A Cultural History 29
Technologies of Participative Self-Photography

According to Gisèle Freund (2011, 11), the historical significance of the
rise of photography is the democratization of the self-representation. But
the recording technique based on the principle of optical projection
imposes a geometrical separation of the universe into: space of represen-
tation versus represented space. According to this division, the operator
cannot be part of the picture, except by using means that bypass the con
straints of the camera.
As long as the photographer was a professional at the service of a client,
this exclusion was not a problem at all. But the development of amateur
photography gave rise to the desire of the photographer to participate—a
logical wish if considering that the operator is no longer an outsider but
a member of the family or friend circle. The self-timer—its first models
were marketed in 1902—is the oldest form of automatization of shoot-
ing.2 Correcting the optical constraint by the time gap, this tool allows
the operator to join in with the group or to photograph him- or herself
in situation.
The user’s guide to the Kodak Retinette, one of the first mainstream
camera models to integrate the self-timer in 1954, explicitly comments
on this increased autonomy: “Taking yourself your own photo! Show that
you were a part of it and the picture becomes interesting. One cannot
always find people willing or capable of handling the camera on site. In
the absence of a pod, you only need a stable support and the self-timer
does the rest!” (see Fig. 2.2).
Nevertheless, the self-timer has several drawbacks. Besides the need of
a support, it requires the picture to be composed beforehand, therefore
excluding spontaneous photography. Giving the camera to a stranger, a
documented practice in the context of tourism, must also be considered
as a case of self-photography by delegation and a testimony of the con-
stant wish of actors to be present in pictures.
The anthropologist Edmund Carpenter (1972, 6) notes that a tourist
does not simply record an image of a place: “Better still, he has someone
photograph him in front of it. Back home, that photograph reaffirms his
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute
this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at
no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a
means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite
these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the
medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,”
such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other
medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES -

Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in
paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic
work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for
damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU
AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE,
STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH
OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH
1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER
THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR
ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If

you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you
paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you
received the work from. If you received the work on a physical
medium, you must return the medium with your written
explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu
of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or
entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.
If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund
in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set

forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’,
WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR
ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this
agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this
agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the
maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable
state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of
this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the

Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless
from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project
Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or
deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect
you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new
computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of
volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™
collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In
2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was
created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project
Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your
efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-
profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by
the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal
tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and
your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500

West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact
links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation’s website and official page at
www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission
of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works
that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated
equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly
important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws

regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of
the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform
and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many
fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not
solicit donations in locations where we have not received written
confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states

where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know
of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from
donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot

make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations
received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp
our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current

donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a
number of other ways including checks, online payments and
credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could
be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose
network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several

printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by
copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus,
we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any
particular paper edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear
about new eBooks.

Exploring The Selfie 1St Ed Edition Julia Eckel Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Exploring The Selfie 1St Ed Edition Julia Eckel Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Exploring the Selfie 1st ed.

Exploring the Selfie

ISBN 978-3-319-57948-1 ISBN 978-3-319-57949-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017960844

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: bortonia

Printed on acid-free paper

This book is the outcome of a conference titled #SEFLIE—Imag(in)ing

1 The Selfie as Image (and) Practice: Approaching Digital

Part I The Selfie in Media Theory and History 25

2 The Consecration of the Selfie: A Cultural History 27

3 Selfie Reflexivity: Pictures of People Taking Photographs 49

4 Locating the Selfie within Photography’s History—and

5 The Selfie as Feedback: Video, Narcissism, and the Closed-

Part II The Displayed Self: The Selfie as Aesthetic Object

6 The Selfie and the Face 113

7 Selfies and Authorship: On the Displayed Authorship

8 Competitive Photography and the Presentation of

9 Of Duck Faces and Cat Beards: Why Do Selfies Need

Part III The Self on Display: Technology and Dispositif

10 Interfacing the Self: Smartphone Snaps

11 The Video Selfie as Act and Artifact of Recording 239

12 Be a Hero: Self-Shoots at the Edge of the Abyss 261

13 Strike a Pose: Robot Selfies 285

Part IV Displaying the Self: Social, Political, and Creative

14 Selfies and Purikura as Affective, Aesthetic Labor 305

15 The Kid Selfie as Self-Inscription: Reinventing

16 “Machos” and “Top Girls”: Photographic Self-Images

Kris Belden-Adams is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the

Winfried Gerling is Professor for Concepts and Aesthetics of New

involvierter Blick: Neue Bilder der Kriegsberichterstattung” in

Mette Sandbye is Professor of Photography Studies and Head of the

Seitenblick auf Georg Forster, Thomas Jefferson und Adelbert von

Fig. 1.1 Collection of animal selfies. Photographs (top left to down

Fig. 2.7 Oscar selfie. Available from: Twitter.com (@TheEllenShow),

Fig. 6.1 Renana at the hairdresser. Printed with permission of the

Fig. 13.1 Mirror reflection of Gigapan (Google 2014). Available from:

Selfies are ubiquitous in online culture: Every frequent user of photo-­

© The Author(s) 2018 1

In Search for a Selfie Definition

Fig. 1.1 Collection of animal selfies

“A photograph that one has taken of oneself”

The definition leaves no doubt: Only photographs can count as selfies;

“taken with a smartphone or a webcam”

“uploaded to a social media website”

The final part of the definition testifies to the fundamental communicative

This seemingly marginal adverb of partial revocation is relevant because

s­ urrounding the selfie phenomenon by suggesting a scholarly and activist

During the conference on which this volume is based,26 these opposing

The next three sections pay special attention to the aforementioned

Lev Manovich, who discuss the aesthetics and usage of self-photographs

of these conformities on the other. Alexandra Schneider and Wanda

9. For a philosophical perspective on the nevertheless striking relevance of

25. A telling example for this seemingly unquestioned connection between

Lasén, Amparo, and Edgar Gómez-Cruz. 2009. Digital Photography and

Images. Continuum 29 (2): 205–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.20

———. 2016. The Networked Camera at Work: Why Every Self-Portrait Is

© The Author(s) 2018 27

remembered for its feminism (Projansky 2001, 130–162), the inaugural

Technologies of Participative Self-Photography

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

1 The Selfie as Image (and) Practice: Approaching Digital

Part I The Selfie in Media Theory and History 25

2 The Consecration of the Selfie: A Cultural History 27

3 Selfie Reflexivity: Pictures of People Taking Photographs 49

4 Locating the Selfie within Photography’s History—and

5 The Selfie as Feedback: Video, Narcissism, and the Closed-

Part II The Displayed Self: The Selfie as Aesthetic Object

6 The Selfie and the Face 113

7 Selfies and Authorship: On the Displayed Authorship

8 Competitive Photography and the Presentation of

9 Of Duck Faces and Cat Beards: Why Do Selfies Need

Part III The Self on Display: Technology and Dispositif

10 Interfacing the Self: Smartphone Snaps

11 The Video Selfie as Act and Artifact of Recording 239

12 Be a Hero: Self-Shoots at the Edge of the Abyss 261

13 Strike a Pose: Robot Selfies 285

Part IV Displaying the Self: Social, Political, and Creative

14 Selfies and Purikura as Affective, Aesthetic Labor 305

15 The Kid Selfie as Self-Inscription: Reinventing

16 “Machos” and “Top Girls”: Photographic Self-Images

Selfies are ubiquitous in online culture: Every frequent user of photo-

In Search for a Selfie Definition

“A photograph that one has taken of oneself”

“taken with a smartphone or a webcam”

“uploaded to a social media website”

s urrounding the selfie phenomenon by suggesting a scholarly and activist

Technologies of Participative Self-Photography