Setting aside the formal dissimilarities between these two forms-of framing, of technique-traditional photographic self-portraiture is far less spontaneous and casual than a selfie is. These are not like the self-portraits we are used to. Style is the endless variation within genre.) (Genres are distinct from styles, which come and go: There are Expressionist portraits, Cubist portraits, Impressionist portraits, Norman Rockwell portraits. (They overlap, too: A portrait might be in a seascape.) A genre possesses its own formal logic, with tropes and structural wisdom, and lasts a long time, until all the problems it was invented to address have been fully addressed. So is still-life, landscape, animal painting, history painting. Selfies have their own structural autonomy. It’s become a new visual genre-a type of self-portraiture formally distinct from all others in history. Selfies have changed aspects of social interaction, body language, self-awareness, privacy, and humor, altering temporality, irony, and public behavior. A fast self-portrait, made with a smartphone’s camera and immediately distributed and inscribed into a network, is an instant visual communication of where we are, what we’re doing, who we think we are, and who we think is watching.
The first selfie? Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1523–24.
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