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Selfie Reflexivity: Pictures of People Taking Photographs

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Exploring the Selfie

Abstract

Photographic practice has produced plenty of self-referential and self-reflexive pictures. The surface of the photograph, the medium’s temporality, or its fragmentary character—that is, the qualities of the photographic image—have frequently been made the subject of modernist photographic art and art photography. However, the act of taking photographs and the diverse photographic practices have rarely entered photographs. This seems to have radically changed with the advent of the selfie, though. Photographs of people taking selfies (or the “selfie scene”) have been produced as visual argument in order to denigrate the practitioners as narcissistic. Recently photos capturing selfie scenes have received more of a positive meaning when they figure as journalistic documents that symbolically mark the celebration of a public event or a celebrity, often including audience and fans in the background. This chapter addresses this new and seemingly ambiguous practice of taking photos of people taking photos, which includes the practice of the selfie itself, which inherently produces self-reflexive photographs insofar as every selfie (as well as a photographic self-portrait in a mirror or by remote shutter release) shows a person in the very moment of the decision to take his or her own picture.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Because social media platforms organize their content by hashtags attached to pictures, a search for “#selfie” leads to a sample of pictures consisting almost exclusively of “real” selfies (or at least portraits tagged as selfies).

  2. 2.

    Browsing databases of stock photography confirms the assumption that pictures of people taking selfies abound (as of April 2016, iStock counts more than 45,000 entries tagged “selfie”; Getty Images lists only slightly less) and that they equal, if not outnumber, selfie pictures in the strict sense (see e.g., www.istockphoto.com/photos/selfie, www.gettyimages.com/photos/selfie, and http://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/selfie.html; all accessed September 16, 2016).

  3. 3.

    In this chapter, the term “ subject” is used in a subject theoretical way to refer to the photographer. What is captured and shown in a photo will, consequently, be called its “object .”

  4. 4.

    The gender bias is mirrored in the stock photography databases. Filtering the pictures tagged “selfie” on Getty images (www.gettyimages.de, searched on April 28, 2016) for “women” and “only women” yields 19,015 and 5500 pictures respectively, whereas “men” and “only men” produces only 12,826 and 1818 specimens respectively.

  5. 5.

    The “selfie at Auschwitz” is the epitome of this discourse; see e.g., Margalit (2014). On this critical discourse, see Meese et al. (2015) as well as Chap. 2 by André Gunthert in this volume.

  6. 6.

    Such as Jason Feif er’s frequently referred to Tumblr collections established in 2013: http://selfiesatseriousplaces .tumblr.com/ and http://selfiesatfunerals.tumblr.com/ (all accessed September 1, 2016). In these cases, proof consists of the selfies themselves and not of photos of persons taking them.

  7. 7.

    Her choice of pictures belies the inclusive “we,” which she addresses in her text.

  8. 8.

    It could be argued that the fact that the picture was never shared threatens its status as a selfie—at least the most common definition counts the sharing of the image among its typical traits (see the introduction to this volume).

  9. 9.

    Rosalind Krauss (1985) draws a parallel between the photographic and the linguistic category of the “shifters,” words like “I,” “this,” and “here,” which are semiotically empty and gain meaning only in a particular speech act.

  10. 10.

    Frosh (2015, 1609–1610) adds that the selfie has even brought a further index ical dimension to photography. By including the arm of the photographer, it indexically refers to the originator of the photographic sign. For a general discussion of the photograph as indexical sign, see Dubois (1990).

  11. 11.

    Wright (2016, 51) defines “self-reflexive photography” as a “brand of formalism” that is manifested in photographs, “which have an overall concern with informing the viewer about the ways that the medium of photography operates—photographs about photography.” Van Gelder and Westgeest (2011, 190) prefer the term “self-reflective” to name a similar “category of photographs that somehow refer to their own production process or the result of that process.” I will stick to the term “self-reflexive,” which is more common in Media Studies, whereas “self-reflective” has a stronger psychological tinge.

  12. 12.

    See, e.g., “(Mis)Understanding Photography,” an exhibition of self-reflexive photographic work since the 1970s that was held in Essen in 2014. Its 70 groups of works comprised only two examples (Barbara Probst, Timm Rautert) that pictured the taking of photographs (Museum Folkwang 2014). Just recently (from July 23, 2016 to March 5, 2017), however, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London showed “The Camera Exposed,” an exhibition that displayed photographs showing cameras, albeit not always in the course of being used to take a picture (see Victoria and Albert Museum 2016).

  13. 13.

    To date, Cecere (2011) gives the largest overview of visual representations of photographers, ranging from photographic snapshots and portraits to movies, cartoons, and postage stamps, from depicting military photographers in action to celebrities carrying a camera. This selection offers a valuable basis regarding the cultural iconography of the photographer but delivers only marginal insights into the self-reflection of actual photographic practice.

  14. 14.

    The projects discussed further on represent only a small fraction of the whole field of photographic documentation of tourist photographers. Ethnographic research on touris t practices uses photographic documents (Robinson and Picard 2009). Others, professional and amateur artists alike, seem more interested in the aesthetic exploration of the photographic practice (Mathieu 2014; Wieden+Kennedy 2014).

  15. 15.

    Stylianou-Lambert and Stylianou (2016, 164) count that in the second edition, “[t]hirteen out of the 74 photographs […] feature people posing or taking photographs while many more include a camera in the picture”.

  16. 16.

    This practice can be seen as a rather impractical forerunner of selfie photography. Delegating the photo taking to another person means redirecting the tourist gaze at the tourists themselves, a practice that is continued in a stabilized form in the practice of selfie taking: “In the self-directed tourist gaze tourists other themselves, rather than other people—hosts or tourists . […] Through othering of the self, the relationship between tourist and destination—the previous ‘other’—takes on a different dimension. […] The gaze is at once directed back at the objectified (selfie-taking tourists look at the front-facing camera screen to see how they appear as the object of their photographic practice), but is also directed at or nodding to the audience (the camera becomes a placeholder for the online audience like a nexus of recursive gazing).” (Dinhopl and Gretzel 2016: 132)

  17. 17.

    Lynn Berger (2011) uses the Pisa push as peg to argue that snapshot photography is cliché ridden and a powerful means in the construction of social reality. It is important, though, not to confound a photograph with the experience it refers to. There can be no doubt that the repetitiveness of the poses and subjects in tourist photography points to the social formation of tourist practice. However, because photographs, and personal snapshot s in particular, do not only signify symbolically and iconically but also indexically, there remains—under the readable surface of the visual clichés—a wealth of personal meanings that is concealed from the external observer (e.g., Ruchatz 2008).

  18. 18.

    Stylianou-Lambert and Stylianou (2016, 169) assume that the Flickr group was started in 1995, the publication year of Small World. This can’t be true because Flickr only went online in 2004. The earliest uploads, a couple of photos by Wrenninge, date back to June 2005.

  19. 19.

    If one chooses to stick to the notion of “ portrait,” the selfie “serves less as a self-portrait, and more as a portrait of the self in the act of self portrayal, with the emphasis shifting from the representation of physiognomy to that of the kind of technological immersion implied by selfie production and distribution” (Levin 2014, n.p.).

  20. 20.

    See Fig. 6.2 in Chap. 6 in this volume by Hagi Kenaan.

  21. 21.

    A similarly elaborated mirror arrangement is realized in Helmut Netwon ’s Self-Portrait with Wife and Model from 1981 (van Gelder and Westgeest 2011, 197). Examples of photographic self-portrait s that make use of mirrors to reflect the relation of photographer and camera are rather scarce, considering their weak prevalence in the pertinent publications, such as Maison de Victor Hugo 2004, 70–71; Lingwood 1986, 66–67, 99; Sobieszek and Irmas 1994, 7, 41, 57–58, 67, 78, 81–82, 84–85, 91–92, 96. Only one such picture appears in a volume restricted to contemporary self-portraiture (Bright 2010, 42).

  22. 22.

    An intriguing example is the work of Vivian Maier , an amateur photographer who was posthumously promoted to photographic artist. Her estate, comprising tens of thousands of photographic negatives (most of which had never been printed during her lifetime), was auctioned off and eventually scrutinized for aesthetically valuable, marketable pictures. For a publication titled Self-Portraits (Maloof 2013), some 90 photos were chosen, most of which show either Maier’s shadow or her reflection on windows, mirrors, and other metal surfaces. The volume indicates that, contrary to the impression created deliberately by the book, “self-portraits ” typically amount to only a small fraction even of ambitious amateur work and gives insight into the forms that are used to achieve self-portraits.

  23. 23.

    See also Chap. 11 by Florian Krautkrämer and Matthias Thiele in this volume.

  24. 24.

    An extreme form of showcasing the remote release cable’s connection to the camera is exhibited in Francesca Woodman’s Self-Portrait at 13 from 1972 (Wilson 2012, 64; Thun-Hohenstein 2014, 82–83).

  25. 25.

    See also Chap. 7 by Julia Eckel in this volume.

  26. 26.

    See also Chap. 10 by Sabine Wirth in this volume.

  27. 27.

    Strictly speaking, the automatic image processing that typically follows the exposure in the smartphone or compact cameras is another factor that may alter the look of the picture, but, of course, not the choice of the moment and the framing.

  28. 28.

    The mirrors appearing in mirror selfies are usually different from the ones to be found in the photographic self-portraits that are situated in the studio context or as reflecting surfaces in the public space. For some exceptional examples in personal photographs, see Starl (1995, 18, 21).

  29. 29.

    The “unruliness” of the reflection in the mirror that counteracts the control of the self-image by the photographer is played with in collections of selfies that make fun of unwanted objects that the mirror has reflected into the selfie (see e.g., Jones 2014).

  30. 30.

    This synchronicity has an artistic precursor in the closed-circuit video installations of the 1970s (see Chap. 5 by Angela Krewani in this volume).

  31. 31.

    A few of these rare examples concerning analog photography are brought together in Dans l’atelier du photographe (Cartier-Bresson 2012), which uses photographic illustrations to picture all stages of photographic practice.

  32. 32.

    To establish the social factors that shape these decisions, it is necessary to review a greater number of pictures, because each selfie only reflects its own particular case.

  33. 33.

    Here I refer loosely to Bruno Latour ’s (1994) concept of the “hybrid actor,” composed of a network of human and nonhuman elements.

  34. 34.

    During the presentation of the fashion collection on the catwalk, the models took selfies, which were immediately uploaded to the social networking sites of Dolce & Gabbana (Chernikoff 2015).

  35. 35.

    The website of Dolce and Gabbana (2016) presents “9 tips” for the “perfect selfie,” one of them being: “Sometimes the solo selfie can seem flat and contrived. We’ve seen it at the Oscars in 2014, we’ve seen it in the Dolce & Gabbana advertising campaign, group selfies are the new selfie.”

  36. 36.

    See Fig. 2.9 in Chap. 2 by André Gunthert in this volume.

  37. 37.

    This selfie has gone viral and has gotten so popular that it came to be featured in the football simulation video game Proevolution Soccer 2016.

  38. 38.

    Most of the photojournalistic documents of this selfie scene align with the selfie’s point of view, visually putting Totti in relation to his supporters in the Curva Sud—which the footballer himself can, of course, perceive only on the smartphone’s display.

  39. 39.

    This also shows in the popular sport that the gathering of pictures of others shooting selfies has become on sites like http://picturesofpeopletakingselfies.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/People-taking-pictures-of-people-taking-selfies-889022964458832/ (both accessed September 1, 2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Jens Ruchatz

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  1. Jens Ruchatz
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Julia Eckel

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    Jens Ruchatz

  3. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Sabine Wirth

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Ruchatz, J. (2018). Selfie Reflexivity: Pictures of People Taking Photographs. In: Eckel, J., Ruchatz, J., Wirth, S. (eds) Exploring the Selfie. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57949-8_3

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