Portraits confront us on the most fundamental level of the self. Self-portraits, even more so.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the current obsession with social media self-portraits via the selfie. Is this a trend of collective narcissicism peaking in our increasingly mediated, digitized and posted lives? Or, is the selfie merely the result of the awesome technology literally in the palm of any smartphone wielding global citizen? Through visual and digital anthropology, aesthetic and media theory, citing art and photographic history, I will explore the digital aura and its significance in culture, art and media.
“Selfie” was a top 10 buzz word in American culture by 2012, though in use before then. “Gaze” has been in use much longer.
The “Renaissance Gaze Shift” is a concept used to describe the evolution from profile to a direct gaze in Renaissance portraiture, paralleled by a socio-economic shift in European…
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