Art
All the Pretty Selfies Are Here to Stay
CHICAGO — Just because "selfies" was named Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year and Barack Obama shot that funeral selfie doesn't mean these internet self-portraits are a passing fad.
Selfies
Opinion
Today in 'End of History': Obama Snaps Funeral Selfie at Mandela Memorial
At left, via the Agence France-Presse, is a photograph of President Barack Obama, of the United States, taking a "funeral selfie" with David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Helle Thorning Schmidt, Prime Minister of Denmark.
Art
Selfies as the Other Side of the Mirror
CHICAGO — What's it like to be on the other side of the mirror? Selfies are contemporary self-portraits shot through the reverse-mirror effect available through smartphones and webcams.
Art
The Feminist Politics of #Selfies
CHICAGO — The selfie is an aesthetic with radical potential for bringing visibility to people and bodies that are othered. This week we present to you a few instances of empowerment that we caught via the #feministselfie hashtag on Twitter, which began in response to a post on Jezebel that suggests
Art
Theory of the Selfie
CHICAGO — OxfordDictionaries.com recently announced that ‘selfie’ is their new Word of the Year, moving it beyond sanctified slang in the Urban Dictionary.
Art
Peace to the Selfies
CHICAGO — It's been a minute since I checked the selfies [at] hyperallergic.com email account. I was avoiding your selfies after a brief hiatus spent understanding selfie discomfort and the public gaze.
Art
Trust My Selfie
CHICAGO — "In the world of networked individuals, it is the person who is the focus: not the family, not the work unit, not the neighborhood, and not the social group," write authors Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman in their 2012 book Networked: The New Social Operating System.
Art
Can a Meme Be Original?
Memes derive their power from their group appeal, their essential authorlessness. Ideas move around the web at the speed of light … when it comes to memes and tumblelogs and internet trends, originality is not the deciding factor.
Art
Stop Freaking Out About Funeral Selfies
CHICAGO — We haven't figured out the boundaries of a private vs. public internet. For one, it's a highly subjective matter and doesn't require hard and fast rules — especially not for the teenagers who are shaping it.
Art
Holding Up Selfies
Pittsburgh-based artist Francis Crisafio's ongoing project HOLDUP in the HOOD extends the definition of the selfie, bringing in a directorial component similar to the one seen in Oli Rodriguez's rendition. For more than a decade, Crisafio has been documenting an after-school arts program called FACE
Art
Is There a Queer Selfie?
CHICAGO — If the act of allowing someone else to photograph you is read as normative, the selfie in and of itself is a queer act of taking back the gaze. So is there such a thing as a queer selfie, or is the selfie inherently a queer(ed) self-portrait?
Art
Revealing the Group Selfie
CHICAGO — Selfies are no more a singular activity than any other type of digital vernacular photograph.