Self in Art/Self As Art: Museum Selfies As Identity Work

Abstract

Selfies, digital images characterized by the desire to frame the self in a picture taken to be shared with an online audience, are important reflections of the contemporary self. Much extant psychological research on selfies has taken a pathologizing view of the phenomenon, focusing on its relationship to narcissism. Our investigation seeks to contribute to a holistic, contextualized and cultural perspective. We focus on the context of museums, places where art, history, education, and culture merge into the selfie taking behaviors of patrons. First, we explore theory salient to our topic of selfie taking, finding selfies to be an important way to construct ongoing series of narratives about the self. We use concepts of identity work, dramaturgy, and impression management to understand it in this light. We relate embodiment within the museum to the selfie’s performative acts and expand upon notions that emphasize and distinguish the aesthetic elements present in many aspects of everyday life. We also question the ability of the museum selfie to destabilize. We also explore the contextual effects of mimicry and social norms. After describing our ethnographic and netnographic method, we investigate the museum selfie phenomenon. We begin with some observations on the extent of selfie-taking in contemporary culture as well as its evolution. Then, we consider selfies as a type of dynamic art form. Our analysis identifies a range of different types of museum selfies: art interactions, blending into art, mirror selfies, silly/clever selfies, contemplative selfies, and iconic selfies. Considered and studied in context, the museum selfie phenomenon reveals far more than the narcissism of the sort explored by past psychological research. The museum provides a stage for identity work that offers an opportunity for the selfie to be used not only for superficial performances but also in the pursuit of more profound self-reflection and its communication. Our ethnographic exploration of the selfie sees it as more than a quest for attention but less than a genuinely destabilizing social force. Selfie taking is complex and multidimensional, a cultural and social act, a call for connection, an act of mimicry, and part of people’s ever-incomplete identity projects.

Ephemeral Storytelling With Social Media: Snapchat and Instagram Stories at the Brooklyn Museum

“…Oftentimes, fears of selfie culture, strongly tied to social media, are touted as reasons not to allow social photography in the museum space. Nevertheless, Kozinets et al (2017) argue that selfie-taking is complex, multidimensional, and a dynamic art form in its own right. These kinds of photos are part of ongoing identity projects, or as Stylianou-Lambert described, these photos are building material for self-identity.…”

Selfies as Duplex Non-verbal Communication: Human—Media Interaction, Human—Human Interaction, Case Study, and Research Manifesto

“…The same search on the specialist database PubMed yields only about 60 hits, but the bulk of these papers consists of policy commentaries, historical narratives, clinical studies, and health communication applications with limited empirical content. The relatively few papers of interest for the current project may be grouped into three broad categories: studies attempting to connect selfierelated behaviors to personality and motivation (Qiu et al, 2015;Sorokowski et al, 2015;Dhir et al, 2016Dhir et al, , 2017Sorokowska et al, 2016;Sung et al, 2016;Baiocco et al, 2017;Diefenbach and Christoforakos, 2017;Etgar and Amichai-Hamburger, 2017;Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017;Krämer et al, 2017;Musil et al, 2017); studies assessing visual compositional choices for selfies, sometimes in relation to neuropsychological hypotheses (Bruno and Bertamini, 2013;Bruno et al, 2014Bruno et al, , 2015Bruno et al, , 2017Lindell, 2017a,b;Manovich et al, 2017;Schneider and Carbon, 2017;Sedgewick et al, 2017;Babic et al, 2018), and theory papers (Frosh, 2015;Senft and Baym, 2015;Eagar and Dann, 2016;Lim, 2016;Carbon, 2017;Kozinets et al, 2017;Bruno et al, 2018). While interesting, these findings and analyses remain scattered and in need of a common theoretical framework.…”

Gastronomic Paradigms in Contemporary Western Cuisine: From French Haute Cuisine to Mass Media Gastronomy

“…(123), very limited in ingredients and culinary technology, and the booming fashions of comfort food (135) or smart food (136) as gastronomic formulas. 8) The gastronomic egocentrism associated with social networks and the self-itis linked to photography (137) or foodstagramming (138), which tends to give more value to the image of the photographed dishes than to their gastronomic importance.…”