Self-portrait in the digital media: repetition, manipulation, update

Abstract

The selfie redefines the boundaries of the self-portrait tradition, changing its social use, the technological and media apparatus that allow its production, and the conditions that govern its circulation. At the same time, the practice of the selfie implicitly or explicitly questions a tradition that has made it necessary for subjects to confront the representation of their own image, the desire to exercise control over it, the need to draw a physiognomy of the body and to create a double or a substitute, which can be looked at from the outside. Within the framework of visual studies, this chapter, through the lens of art, film and media theory, analyses self-portraiture in digital media and situates the phenomenon of the selfie, particularly by analysing the ‘#artselfie’ project, launched by the New-York-based ‘cultural interventions’ col- lective DIS,2 which consists of pictures taken in public spaces depicting the photo- graphed subject in close proximity to an exhibited work of art.