Introduction
Understanding self- identity in ‘selphie’ portrait photography looks at the influence of social media on the way people take mobile phone pictures connected to editing a new identity as portrayed in the photographs shared on Internet social networks. The amazing popularity of phone camera (see Figure 1) technology, photography, and the number of self-portraits finally appearing on Internet social networks continues creating a phenomenon. The effect looks at how social networks influence how people take selphie (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2014) photographs and edit them. Comparisons of film and digital photography linking to self-identity show a connection to marketing, sociological, and psychological underpinnings.
According to Grogan (2008, p. 2), 1990 established the discipline of the “sociology of the body.” The literature of Turner (1992, p. 39-50) reveals self-
identity and the body image as the “somatic society” allowing describing the global importance of the body “in contemporary sociology.”
Literature further supports that not only media of the 21st century but also social media contributes to people already unhappy with their body imagery (Grogan, 2008; Squires, 2002; Stefoff, 2008). Better understanding of the popularity of the camera phones not only making it easier to take selfie photos but the readily downloadable apps used for editing out unwanted body and face characteristics as well as editing and enhancing desirable characteristics shows the sociological and psychological motivation buying and using this software encourages (Okabe, 2005).
of the camera phone “selfie” and social media, self-image, and the ability for altering the reality of the photo has a base value attached to money.
Marketing frames all this activity as the literature agrees about relationship marketing (Noor, Perumal, and Hussin, 2010) and connects to those capitalist endeavours looking at moneymaking opportunities directly linked with new technology. Thus, marketing practices occur on the camera phone, the editing apps, and the social networking activity where posting these photos take place and where the psychology of advertising exists – even on the most popular free sites including Face Book, Twitter, and even Instagram (Systrom, 2013; kpcbcom, 2014; Wittig, 2001; Wykes, 2005). According to Tilley (2009, p. 173) this is a matter of understanding how such a strategy “will produce market-oriented public relations" akin to relationship marketing and the consumer. “This holds true to the software apps in camera phones adding another push to the selfie occurrence (Wright, 1999).
Roeckelen (2004, p. 539) makes this even clearer describing how external influences and mental suggestions of self-identity and body image demands social, psychological and marketing knowledge pulling the consumer buying these camera phones taking selfies, changing the reality of who they are with editing abilities with the software, and engaging with others on the Internet social media sites. This connects to "whether imagery is viewed arbitrarily as an independent, intervening, or dependent variable; and the weight/substance of empirical evidence of the current theoretical and hypothesized formulations" with the person buying these camera phones. The influential draw of social media on people scurrying to use these camera phones according to Mani and Macinnism (2003, p.177) is available in ongoing studies on this. “(The) burgeoning evidence seems to point to the two strategies (i.e., pictures and concrete words) as fairly reliable persuasion tools." Consequently, people without professional training enjoying this popular activity, using camera phones buy the equipment, take the selfies, edit the selfies, and upload to these Internet social media sites.
FIGURE 1: Global Smartphone Users 2009-2013
The intention of this scholastic investigation using the methodology of meta-research of the existing literature looks at showing how Internet social networks generates selfie engagement by its users revealing the purposeful shifting of identities emerging with connection to editing. Further, discourse on the technology of the camera phone apps includes examples of enhancement effects with Photoshop. Theories discussed in this work connect to Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, and James Elkins and other input by those in the photography field. Discussion includes post-modern ideas about identity according to Cindy Sherman and Graham Clarke views. The discussion begins with the theorists and others.
Theorists and Others
Roland Barthes
According to Shawcrosse (1997, p. 25), “Barthes takes on photography itself begins in mythology. This positioning within certain myths of the photograph is self-conscious on Barthes's part; it represents the intertextual display of what-goes without saying devoid of any determination toward ideological abuse.” His essays from the 1960s on photography are mythological based where he “maintains that photography does not transform reality but is, in fact, its analogon (an equivalent of perception).” His view decides that whether a drawing, painting, a movie, or even theatrical performance these except for photography are reproductions of reality. Barthes sees all these other artistic endeavours as “the style of the reproduction--its ‘treatment’ by the creator—(that) overwhelms the attempt to achieve that very realism.” However, “In contradistinction, in the photograph what we first ‘see,’ according to Barthes, is literal reality.” Barthes introduces this view with attention to “the rhetoric of one of Western photography's two predominant myths: in the press photograph, Barthes notes, what is at service is an image that offers itself ‘as a mechanical analogue of reality.’” Applying this philosophy to the selfie and identity the photographer intends portraying then clearly creates a problem when considering the ability to “alter” the reality through the Photo Shop and other editing apps altering the “so called” reality. Further discussion on this point appears later in this work.
Susan Sontag
Sontag (1998, p. 174) describes photography as, “putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power.” Clearly, this explains the idea of the editing ability the person taking a selfie sees themselves in having a specific power that social media pronouncedly offers them by having the ability of uploading and posting a photo of self. Further, Sontag explains that, “Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out.” This explains the process of the editing of a selfie whether to suit the person taking the photo or to adhere to the criterion of a social network website for uploading and posting a selfie.
Describing the intention of the selfie looks at Sontag (1998, p. 175) description of how, “Photographs furnish evidence.” Much of the time, the selfie provided proof of participating in an event, being with a particular person, and all of the other “evidences” prodding the selfie fanaticisms behind uploading these photographs to the Internet social media sites. Sontag, “a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency (What) photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth.” It is, “In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects.”
A knee-jerk response to this statement by Sontag therefore, on the subject of the selfie implies the same kind of focus as a professional photographer but with the camera phone, the encouragement – no- the insistence psychologically placed on participants in the social media sites on the Internet for sharing selfies. Therefore, the outcome makes more sense connected to the selfie phenomenon (Andrews and Burnett, 2007; Appignanesi and Garret, 1995; Barret, 1997; Bate, 2009; Lopate, 2009; Jacobs, 2001).
James Elkins
Elkins (2011, p. vii) writes that photography has a “social significance.” In this context, the connection to selfie photography linked with the influence of the social media sites of the Internet again, takes on a purposeful significance when considered from the perspective of self-awareness or the idea of self-identity. Elkins further offers, how, “photography’s (emerges) as a social glue, as witness to war, as mirror of the middle class, as medium for constructions of race and gender, as a political tool, and as a principal determinant of our visual culture.” Again, this philosophical idea makes the selfie photography sense of identity an understandable reaction to the 21st technology of the Internet, social media site, the abundant use of the personal phone with remarkable camera abilities and the apps that make it easy to make each user’s sense of identity in his/her own control. Another view Elkins provides about photography shows how it is a way to establish a visual context of “memories, how it preserves the past, how it seems real, how it captures time, how it shows us other people’s lives.” At this point of this scholastic investigation, the idea of the selfie diminishes in its context as a social application.
With time, while always continuing with her commitment to the idea of how photographs served as consistent medium for representing the world Sontag did alter her approach to photography and her writings proved an opening to new views in exploring such areas as the morality of how photographs reducing reality to clichés (Andrew & Burnett, 2007). This directly points to how social media encouraging the selfie may indeed, produce a clichés effect especially with the majority of everyone taking the same kind of pose – particularly among the female participants such as the duck face that include celebrities and regular social media users (see Figure 2, and 3).
FIGURE 2: Celebrity Kris Jenner doing a duck face selfie.
FIGURE 3: Two more duck face selfies.
Cindy Sherman
In fact, the bulk of the theorists and others section considers her as a prototype to what the selfie now shows in creativity, altering the sense of identity of self (Baudrillard, 1994; Burrows, 2008; Butler, 2002; Cadena, 2012-2013; Childs, 2004; Coke, 1986; Costello and Iversen2010). Other experts on post modernism also look at the kinds of expression found in the Cindy Sherman pop culture examples (Cruz and Smith, 1997; Featherstone, 2007; Kellein, 1991; Michaud, 2012; Perkins, 2008; Rosenau, 1992; Schleifer, 2000; Shohiini, 2006).
The intellectual approach to the still photography derived from films by the artist Cindy Sherman drew attention because they represent what art theoreticians view photographs as the embodiment of the deconstruction of the idea of self as continually shifting (Frascina and Harrison, 1982; Griffith, 1994; Harrison, 2001; Heiferman, 2014; Hempel, 2014). According to Sandler (1996, p. 408), “In 1977 Cindy Sherman began to photograph herself disguised as popular female stereotypes who might have appeared in 1950s B-movies. She invented the characters – ‘the career girl,’ ‘the model,’ ‘the actress’ or ‘the star" -- styled them and their sets, acted or simulated them, and directed and photographed them.” Like the selfie editing apps, these images of Sherman’s photographic creations of self, appeared so unfixed viewers found it nearly impossible determining the real, the imagined, the fantasized, and even the appropriated. “Sherman's images also appealed to art theoreticians because, as Hal Foster remarked, they are ‘types presented by the media as women. In her work we see that to express a self is largely to replicate a model.’”
The beginnings of pop culture emerge and just like the technological advances of the camera phone connected to social media and the Internet another form of the same comes forth with the selfie (Jacobs, 2001; Jarvis, et al, 2003; Kellein, 1991). From a sociological context, pop culture is a form of modelling and the same applies to the pop culture nature of selfies (Banduras, 1973; Jarvis, 2003; Squires, 2002; Schultz and Schultz, 2009; Wittig, 2001).
Therefore, as Sandler (1996, p. 408) explains, “The self that Sherman portrayed was one that she as a woman was called upon to emulate in a male-dominated society, that is, models constructed by the media with which women were encouraged to identify (as some observed).” Others have said her work is a post-modern type where artists take images already in the world and make them the way they want them so the images become a part of the popular culture. This is what Cindy Sherman does. Cindy Sherman has no theory about her art and she speaks about it with caution. She just jumps in and acts like a girl dressing up. Women can have more self-expression in society than men and that is what Sherman does. Tradition has always made it important that women dress up and it starts in childhood. That is part of why the selfies are so popular with women or females (little girls are making selfies).
Focus of the individual creating a selfie for uploading to a social media site and the opportunity the camera phone allows Sandler, (1996, p. 409) tells how Sherman shared how she would spend hours in front of the mirror practicing different poses “practicing” poses. Later he explains, this practicing occurred to her as if, "It was like painting in a way: staring at my face in a mirror, trying to figure out how to do something to this part of my face, how to shade another part.” At this time, “(She) was assigned to do a serial piece and her friend Robert Longo suggested: "‘you have all this makeup, why don't you do a series of photographs of yourself putting it on?’ Therefore, I did this transitional series -- from no makeup at all to me looking like a completely different person. The piece got all this feedback. It dawned on me that I'd hit on something."
This early record of the ability to change how a person (in this case Cindy Sherman) becomes enabled changing self-perception of his/her identity connected to photography shows there is a creative consciousness attached to the same process with the selfie. In the case of Cindy Sherman in the guise of the model by her own admittance at some point, she realized something new in the process. Thus, in the context of social media spurring engaging in producing (editing) the selfie and publishing at the web site this same process occurs attached to the changing perception of identity of self.
Probably, in the truest sense of comparing the Cindy Sherman artistic development with the evolution of self-identity as the social media of her day connecting with the selfie and the Internet social media of today is when Sherman began creating her cutouts (Figures 4). In doing so like the selfie editing process, Sherman began her editing with inventing specific scenarios, casting herself in specially designed roles, dressing them, photographing these characters in ideas of various scenes, cutting them out, pasting them down on paper, and ultimately exhibiting them like storyboards (Sandler, 1996). This same kind of framework appears in the selfie pictorials or the slide show telling a story as presented on the social media websites.
The cheeky nature of certain websites inviting celebrities and anyone agreeing to the terms of use, in uploading the less than demure selfie, is clearly, what Sherman was doing when she was at the height of her specialty. Sherman understands how men look at women (as do the women putting selfies on line). However, Sherman also turned and looked at herself because as a photographer she was able to make her own image into something more than what men fantasize about in a woman (Sandler, 1996).
Sherman’s imagery stands out because it comments about society. At the same time, looking at her as a trailblazer of artistic self-expression, or as Sandler (1996, p. 409) explains, she emerges as a “neoexpressionist dimension of her photography was equally or more significant.” The quality of the inner Cindy Sherman existed as “hidden in the ‘exterior’ types; even art theoretician Owens allowed that, much as he claimed that her primary aim was to deconstruct the mass media.” She continues as recognized for her seeming ability to create mystery in representing of "the very perfection of her impersonations." Her self-identity through the precision of the reconstructed images she created adeptly to the point the “artist and role appear to have merged into a seamless whole."
For the sake of artistic expression created by Cindy Sherman it is obviously a debate as presented by Sandler (1996, p. 409) that unlike the general appearances of the outrageous numbers of the selfies, “Her images transcend media stereotypes, cultural clichés, and both stock and deconstructive readings and evoke authentic psychological states, emotions, desires, and fantasies” So much that her portrayals offer, “(What) it really feels like to be woman as victim, woman as sex object.” As an argument from an academic perspective, this goes to the assumption of “(What) it really feels like to be Cindy Sherman.” This is what her works present, as “and (what) was the source of their expressive power.”
Sandler (1996, p. 409) also writes, “After inventing media like images of ‘beautiful’’ women, Sherman turned against ‘beauty’ with a ferocity rarely found in the history of art.” By 1985 instead of Sherman showing her self-image she began showing “a hideous mélange of dolls, teddy bears, and toy monsters submerged in a stew of slime, vomit, pus, and glop that look as if they had oozed out of horror movies.” With this and easily assumed “Sherman appears to have thought of herself as garbage, and in this sense her images are existential.”
Coming back to the already mentioned psychological connection to identity through self imagery in photographs this time in Sherman’s work also according to Sandler (1998, p.411) “seem to represent ‘the nightmares of her subconscious, and social, representing, (what one critic calls) “the bulimic excess of consumerism and its corresponding cycles of binging and purging.’” Therefore,” [What's left is the disgust that follows overindulgence."' This expression of Sherman’s in relation to the selfie and identity may also show the both,(as)“a more profound sense,” when she and the selfie project “repellant and depressing pictures exemplify the ‘the abject’ in life and in art, that which is cast off, dirty, degraded, grotesque, and pathetic.’” Another critic, according Sandler said hers is an “imagination (extending into a cyborg world of freaks and monsters,’ which violates the border between the human and the nonhuman.” One of the truest connections of the Sherman style of self-identity and the app enhanced/altered selfie portrait examines the disgusting as shown in selfie examples using apps to change the bodies of the photographer (Figures 5, 6, 7, 8,9, and 10).
FIGURE 5: Creating multiple breasts FIGURE 6: Distorted faces FIGURE 7: Butt enhanced
Like Sherman, the images of the app-altered selfies are at the least parody traditional ideas of portraits. Sandler (1996, p. 412) explains, “ Sherman's photographs commanded art-world attention, not only because of their references to art theory, feminism, the mass media, consumer society, and, in her later works, to the abject in human nature” In addition, “Moreover, they were related to other kinds of art -- notably performance art, body art, conceptual art, media art, and deconstruction art -- all of which seemed peculiarly relevant in the 1970s and 1980s.” The vanguard creativity of her self-identity in the photographs she designed around the perception of her in and as part of the world around her are again revealed in the types of selfies the camera phone and the apps provide literally billions of people today interacting and engaging with social media websites on the Internet.
Others see the technology of mobile phones changing the way users interact with one another and the selfie portrait via the social media network is a clear example. Camera phone definitely bring users faster and easier manner in which to shoot and share selfies. The question arises around the fact the massive amounts of photos existing and created literally every minute because of digital technology in hand reach of billions of cell phones does the value of photography as an art form change.
Graham Clarke
Graham Clarke (1997, pp. 100-103), describes, “The portrait in photography is one of the most problematic areas of photographic practice.” Clarke explains how a photographic portrait is ambiguous or it says many things to the onlooker. This is a clear connection to the ability of editing and changing the image in the selfie as having an ambiguity intentionally supported by social media. Clarke further explains, taking a picture of a sculpted bust of a person just as the techniques the apps on a camera phone allows the person creating an identity with the selfie provides an ambiguity to a photograph. “And part of this ambiguity relates to the question of precisely what, and who, is being photographed (and) it is not an image of person, an individual, or personality, but of sculpture, and a sculpture which is the apotheosis of an ideal image of manhood.” A photograph of a bust of Apollo shows the world that “Apollo was not only a Greek god, son of Zeus and Let; he was 'the most Greek of Greek Gods', an ideal image to be placed against his direct opposite, Dionysus. Where Apollo represented perfection, order, and harmony, so Dionysus represented chaos and the disorder of life.” Apollo exists as an image in space; Dionysus stands for its efficacy in time.”
It is this kind of aesthetic attached to the person creating a perfect picture with apps for an idealized selfie as shown in (Figures 12 and 13) that Clarke (1997, p. 101) describes about a photo of a bust of Apollo. “Apollo as a portrait' insists on the perfect smoothness of atone face immune to time and experience.” In the same way, the selfie has command of editing apps creating the perfection as his/her perspective of self-identity envisions. When the editing achieved having a face that may appear, looking into the “void and is devoid of any sense of self, of character and identity” there is a definite sense of ambiguity of self-identity. In addition, this, accordingly, “of course, is the point.” So, like the portrait of Apollo the “myth, not a history; (and not) to an ideal, not an individual” make the editing of the selfie also a myth of the identity of the subject. Therefore, to “what sense can a literal image express the inner world and being of an individual before the camera?” This is particularly so when considering the world of the selfie and identity.
Clarke (1997, p. 101) further explains, portrait “photographers have been concerned to expressing the single image an assumed 'inner' being.” Now whether this is true of the selfie remains a debate that it seemingly only those in the academic world consider. It remains a mystery what exactly those indulging in the literally billions of selfies encouraged posted on social media Internet websites have to say about this part of the identity and the selfie. In other words, a good portrait tells a lot about the person. As Inge Monath asserts, a successful portrait 'catches a moment of stillness within the daily flows of things, when the inside of a person has a chance to come through'.
Clarke (1997, pp. 101-102) also explains about a photograph having “‘inward power' (according to the) personality before the camera. Consistently, the portrait photograph tells about “sense of the inner self' in terms of a single composite image, sans history, society, or conflict.” Again, in terms of the selfie there has without a doubt amongst the billions of photographs exists those people using their camera phones with the intention of declaring at least on the subconscious level this type of directed activity in taking a selfie photograph. “In a sense, every portrait seeks its apotheosis in ‘Apollo’.” In reflection, surely, “The portrait photograph is, then, the site of a complex series of interactions—aesthetic, cultural, ideological, sociological, and psychological.” The practical consideration of this makes absolute sense in the case of the selfie and its relationship to Internet social media interaction.
Accordingly, Clarke (1997, pp. 102-103) further explains his view of how, “In many ways it (portrait photography including the selfie) simultaneously represents the photographic image at its most obvious and yet at its most complex and problematic.” This connects to the idea as Clarke shares “As has been suggested, ‘The portrait is a sign whose purpose is both the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity'. The portrait photograph hovers between opposing terms of meaning—a constant dialectic of significance in which the problem of individual status and self is held.” Therefore, “Part of the problem, of course, lies in the question of what constitutes a portrait' to begin with.”
With the beginning of portrait photography in the 19th century, this medium considered the equal to the oil painting portrait created more of the encoding process already discussed that occurs in portrait photography (Vam.ac.uk, 2014). Here it is the connection of the portrait done in oils standing alone for the sake of the individual in the painting, whereas the portrait photograph including the selfie links to a democratic and popular form of identification of people. Tradition shows how oil portraits showed a particular esteem of privilege as a medium because of the very nature of it as a confirmation of the status of the subject, and the significance of the subject (Clarke, 1997). In this at the very least when it comes to the selfie, the psychological satisfaction inherent to the action of posting the selfie on any of the social networks establishes the same kind of significance for the person in the photograph.
Some theorizing on the philosophy of the portrait painting offer that each painting establishes an individual meaning achieved through a system of symbols and codes where the self is advertised in the process of the framing (Clark, 1997). This is definitely a process that those engaging in creating the selfie and posting the outcome on the social networking websites intend – an advertising of sorts of “here I am, this is me, my identity, myself.”
. At the same time according to Clark (1997, p. 102), “of course the portrait was a study overtime, whereas the photograph suggests an instantaneous capturing. The portrait in oils claimed to give a composite, even definitive, image of the personality—a formal representation in which was embodied an assumed status and public significance.” While in a sense, “Superficially, at least, the photograph is directly opposed to the portrait painting, and yet it is extraordinary how the portrait photograph remains encoded within the context of painting—hence the complexity and contradictions at the heart of any photograph of an individual.”
The Value of Photographs
Clarke (1998, p. p19), writes, “Like Roland Barthes called photographs: a ‘transparent envelope’, a potent phrase that suggests its underlying ambiguity as an artefact and a means of representation (then that is to say the) value of photographs in the past.” The importance of the photograph is in the way it connects with the audience and no matter how many the camera phones allows people taking photographs this is an important value factor. In this, it is Forrester (2000, p. 169) that looks at literature discussing how each onlooker of the selfie in this case rates the value of the image through qualities that include low marks if the selfie remains unimaginative or concreate and of a dull style to the point of commonplace. On the other hand, a selfie receiving high marks look how imaginative, open for interpretation, having self-reflective or interesting themes. “In another area of social psychological researchthe photographic portrait provides the foundation for an analysis of self-presentation and identity.” One researcher on this looks at any portrait from a social psychology perspective as involving the attention “to the choice of pose, gesture, expression, costumes and props.” In this way, it is “(the) vision of the sitter and the ambience (that) provide information about the way in which the subject is to be understood and categorised as an individual who plays roles according to their own definition.”
Additionally, Forrester (2000, p. 169) explains how the “selfie” presented as a spontaneous to a certain degree leaks information of the way the photographer saw self at the time. In other words, “the photograph is considered as a frozen sample of a pattern of self-presentation.” As traditional photography by the adept taking self-portraits using “tricks of the trade” regarding presenting self-imagery, in the final product with “themselves (appearing) in their ideal representation, or to highlight the procedures involved in making a picture that ‘unmasks the process and their person.’” Interestingly, this same researcher sees that in earlier self-portraits by adept photographers in the traditional production, a connection exists when considering the difference between males and females in the same way as with the selfie and the participation by gender (Figure 11). “The men focus on communicating strong ideas about their vocation; employing elaborate stagings and genre play, (and) ‘they use portraits of themselves to persuade the audience of the validity and interest of their work, their personal selves drowned by these productions. In contrast, the women photographers employ signs, postures and props in line with (current and popular) conventions” typical of selfies showing on specific Internet social networks.
FIGURE 8: Recent statistical breakdown of the selfie photo-using mobile uploads by gender (photo byab.softwarestudies.com)
There is a phenomenon that too much photographs lead to people easily forgetting the photos the just seen or took because in the next second there comes a plenty of new photograph to replace the old ones. That is to say, photographs, to some extent, has become to an ephemera. People browse many kinds of photographs every day through social media and that numbers about 1.8 billion different shots (Hempel, 2014). Some of them are not getting into our mind. Just as Vilem Flusser (2006, p. 65) says, “We no longer take any notice of most photographs, concealed as they are habit. We ignore everything familiar in our environment and only notice what has changed.”
Instagram photos eventually fit an idea of redundancy meaning a repetition of information and the probable. Photos for memory frame why many of the photos posted on the social media sites as well as communication, and self-expression and there can be debate about the inherent value of that (Cadena, 2012-2013).
On the other hand, or looking at it from a different perspective, the production of massive amounts of photographs – selfies and otherwise – may make them less precious than when photographs had a particular value because they were scarce. This was clearly due to the lack of technology, resources, and the difficulty of taking one photograph was far more complicated before the state of the art of the personal camera phone of the 21st century.
One literature source offers a more logical look of the value of the selfie because of the ease of sharing such photographs in particular to the social media sites. Flusser (2000, pp. 8-9) explains that that when a person looks at one image then goes back again to look at it the experience makes the image appear to have more – it is elevated to a new artistic image. “Then complexes of significance arise in which one element bestows significance on another and from which the carrier derives its own significance: The space reconstructed by scanning is the space of mutual significance”.
Therefore, the value comes from a sense of magic as described by Flusser (2000, pp. 9-10) in how, “This space and time peculiar to the image is none other than the world of magic, a world in which everything is repeated and in which everything participates in a significant context.” It is in, “Such a world is structurally different from that of the linear world of history in which nothing is repeated and in which everything has causes and will have consequences.” An example, from the view of the historical is how the “sunrise is the cause of the cock's crowing; in the magical one, sunrise signifies crowing and crowing signifies sunrise.” Again, in this where the value is because, “The significance of images is magical. The magical nature of images must be taken into account when decoding them.”
Maybe, as Flusser (2000, pp. 10-11) suggests, “(It) is wrong to look for ‘frozen events' in images” because “they replace events by states of things and translate them into scenes.” Flusser unknowingly makes a case for the value of the selfie photograph. This is because in his view it is easy to see how this kind of photograph intended for sharing especially on social media show, “The magical power of images (that) lies in their superficial nature, and the dialectic inherent in them - the contradiction peculiar to them - must be seen in the light of this magic.” Flusser explains how, explains how people fit into the world. The images help make sense to humans about where they fit into the world because without them it does not make sense. “Human beings 'exist', i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible.” In the case of the selfie on social media this allows people to reach out to one another visually and explain a personal view of the world in a photograph of his/her own design. At the same time, Flusser reminds, “However, as soon as this happens, images come between the world and human beings.”
The edited and augmented selfie should represent value in truth – as Flusser (2000, pp. 10-11) explains it, “They are supposed to be maps but they turn into screens: Instead of representing the world, they obscure it until human beings' lives finally become a function of the images they create.” What happen is, “Human beings cease to decode the images and instead project them, still encoded, into the world 'out there', which meanwhile itself becomes like an image - a context of scenes, of states of things.” This is probably one of the best explanations of the loss of the value of the selfie in connection to the aesthetic of truth about the person in the selfie when edited using apps.
Flusser (2000, pp. 10-11) goes on and explains, “This reversal of the function of the image can be called 'idolatry'; wean observe the process at work in the present day: The technical images currently all around us are in the process of magically restructuring our 'reality' and turning it into 'global image scenario'.”
Another way of looking at this connects to how people forget they create images allowing their identity has a place in the world. Without the decoding process of these created images of an identity peoples’ lives turn their own photographic images they create having meaning or value but the outcome of this imaginative activity turns from meaning to a hallucination. The augmented, distorted, changed selfie that appears purposefully on social networks is no doubt in a sense this very thing with a distorted value perhaps only the photographer understands.
Photo Editing Apps
Since people want to get a brilliant look of self when taking, their selfies the photo editing applications on mobile phone allow people to decorate their photos before sent them out. These apps help users achieve the goal of being what they expect themselves to be look like. Meituxiuxiu is a photo editing application. It specializes in adjusting people’s feature. As we can see below in (Figure 12) is the original photo taken by a mobile phone. The image below
(Figure 9) is after editing by the app anyone can get a perfect look as model as shown (Figure 10).
This phenomenon is challenging the idea of ‘identity’ in photography. The process is simple. Users have to select the area where they want adjusted according to editing options whether it is on the person’s look and location (Figures 9 and 10 above) or locations (Figure 11 and 12 below) and again changing lighting on a selfie (Figure 13 and 14 below). The app for editing may have the photographer or editor selecting the area toward the way they want to stretch or squeeze. On the other hand, the editing app allows selecting Photo Shop where colour, tone, black and white, and cropping allows changing a selfie. These processes are complete by smart phones and ready for posting at social media sites online.
The Editing Techniques
It is obvious that the image above in (Figure 13) on the right hand side has bigger eyes, smaller cheek size, and better skin tones than the image one the left. When people select the certain button below the photo (Figure 14 above), the editing app removes the dark circles under the eye, enlarges the eyes, and whitens the skin and so on. The identity as offered in creating the ideal imagery of the selfie from the subjective intentions of the photographer using the 21st century technology of Photo Shop apps and others makes it possible for uploading to the social networking site the photo of the ideal identity of self.
Discussion/Conclusion
Thinking about and finally assessing the multitude of literature presented from the meta-research seeking a better understanding how the foundation of photography from its beginnings and into the focus of this scholastic project centred on the phenomenon of the selfie provides a better idea of the process. As the title of this academic investigation, makes clear the bases of this research seeking identifying to what extent the social network websites on the Internet influence the way the phone camera ease of access, technical editing options with the apps results in the photos uploaded provides a strong philosophical discussion. The ability to attach the pop culture artistic part of the selfie similar with the creative development of Cindy Sherman defined part of this process. Psychologically the human experience shows the same development through the different eras of the individual and group portrait on the effect it has on the identity each participant holds about the way they see self.
This is the same in particular to the massive amounts of people taking and posting selfies on line in social network websites. Again, it is Cindy Sherman where a better understanding about changing the person’s identity directly through locale, costume, and setting that fits the activities of the selfie process doing the same or applying the editing app options for changing the personal perception of identity in the selfie photograph before posting on the Internet. Clearly, the social network sites themselves drive the current fads in producing a selfie as the different examples in this document showed in the (Figures 1-17). As an art form, selfies connects with the imagery art form that photography holds a position in the global view.
The technical aspects of the phone camera (and the first cameras) creating imagery must consider the scientific aspect of the process and whether this is an addition to the “artistic” side to the creativity of the selfie photograph or is it the medium component like paint in developing an image that exists in the person’s mind. It is the philosophical positions of the theorists brought into the discussion in the academic endeavor that raises these kinds of considerations indeed. At the very least the mechanically led technology of photography that evolved from centuries past into the technology of the 21st century with the camera phone proves a historical legacy for each of the developing eras and the products of those advancements that makes the photograph selfie today as different as the daguerreotype. Imagery of course came thousands of years before the technical ones and the traditional images are as abstract as the selfies made with the camera phone.
In conclusion, the process of understanding self- identity associated with the ‘selphie’ portrait photography looked at the literature and the examples presented in this academic investigation of the influence of social media on the way people take mobile phone pictures connected to editing a new identity as portrayed in the photographs shared on Internet social networks. In doing so, the photography theorists Barthes, Sontag, Elkins, and Clarke views. The discussion provided how the technology of the camera phone apps includes examples of enhancement effects with Photoshop an editing options provided examples in the (Figures 2-3, 6-10, and 12-17).
As pointed out the discussion of the post-modern ideas about identity according to Cindy Sherman proved a remarkable foundation clearly connected to the innovative creativity in photographers creating selfies as an expression of his/her perspective of self-identity. As an art form, the selfie remains arguably a philosophical topic with varying opinions applied to theoretical philosophies of art and the genre of photography, of the social, psychological, and the marketing contexts of the selfie activity and how the changing nature of self-identity surely connects to all these factors.
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