1.3 “Selfie” is a new genre of art

“Selfie” became a new genre of art: Art at Arm’s Length. It’s possible that the “selfie” is the most prevalent and popular genre ever, but it’s not anything new. There were a lot of pre-selfie photo and pictures. Look back we can see a lot of self-portrait masterpieces: works of world-famous artists such as: Van Gogh and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn but their works can’t be compared with ours “selfies”. The new genre has its earmarks. Excluding those taken in mirrors—a distinct subset of this universe—‘selfies’ are nearly always taken from within an arm’s length of the subject. For this reason the cropping and composition of selfies are very different from all preceding self-­portraiture. There is the near-constant visual presence of one of the photographer’s arms, typically the one holding the camera. Actually it’s difficult to divide “selfies” into proper types, but we’ve read a lot of mass media sites and distinguish the most popular currents of selfie:

1. to show off yourself: “the duckface selfie”, “underwear selfie”, “muscle-man selfie”;

2. to show where you are: “restaurant selfie” or “foodie selfie”, “bathroom selfie”, stuck in traffic or “car selfie”;

3. to show that you are with celebrities or visit a world famous place. And it also can be divided into:

1. “selfies” made with mirrors;

2. “selfies” made without mirrors.

1.4 Is “selfie” good or evil?

1.4.1 “Selfie” breaks the rule of privacy and morality

The most selfies are silly, typical, boring. Guys flexing muscles, girls making pouty lips (“duckface”), people mugging in bars or throwing gang signs or posing with monuments or someone famous. “Selfies” are usually casual, fast; their primary purpose is to be seen here, now, by other people, most of them unknown, in social networks.

Some critics note that: “we become our own biggest fans and private paparazzi,” and that they are “ways for celebrities to show that they’re just like regular people, making themselves their own controlled PR machines.”

“Selfies” have changed aspects of social interaction privacy, and humor, altering temporality, irony, and public behavior. “Selfie” is just a photo, a picture, but there are some moral rules which tell us what is polite and what is not. For example, President Obama has taken a selfie with world leaders: the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the British Prime Minister David Cameronat at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela. Another example, a photo posted by John Quirke. The picture itself is nothing; shot from below in what looks like a basement. His mouth is agape, his eyes wide open. He wears headphones. The impact of the picture comes in Quirke’s tag: “Selfie from the gas chamber in Auschwitz.” There are similar pictures of people at Chernobyl, in front of car wrecks, with a suicide taking place over one’s shoulder. Another selfie is taken “The photos are of me at Treblinka”. On the pickup site Grindr, people use as their avatars selfies taken in Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.

May be people just want to say; “I was here” but all these can be called as violations of sanctified spaces or disrespect to the dead.

Another problem connected with selfie is the openness of private life. People try to share every moment of their lives even very intimate. Yes, we had a lot of naked or half-naked shoots, but it was in some magazines but now it became a mainstream.

It’s not bad to have your own selfie blog but may be we should shorten our audience.

We make pictures with strange stuff visible in the background—the ones where we see the books on the coffee table, items on the shelves, posters on the walls, leftovers in the kitchen. All these things let people think they’re getting some peek into the person’s unseen life. In a hundred years, the mass of “selfies” will be an incredible record of the fine details of everyday.