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Be a Hero: Self-Shoots at the Edge of the Abyss

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Exploring the Selfie

Abstract

A tendency has developed in recent times toward a close connection of the (photo) apparatus and the body. The GoPro, the “world’s most versatile camera,” as stated in the developer’s self-description, is often worn attached to the body, is held at a moderate distance from the body by means of a selfie stick, or is firmly mounted on helmets and sporting equipment. Regarding these cameras, a whole array of practices and technologies has evolved that strongly promote “self-shooting.” Thus, a new genre of the self-image has arisen: images of skaters, surfers, fliers, fallers, and the fallen, all capturing themselves in all circumstances up until death; it seems that the camera itself creates the risk to fall. This chapter focuses on the relationship of aesthetics, body, and apparatus that can be traced back to early examples of “falling photographers” and that is nowadays so impressively exemplified by the GoPro technique and its usage. Additionally, the text deals with the general leveling of the difference between the moving image (video) and the still image (photography) within the digital realm, specifically via the unification of both, technologies and practices, in one apparatus—like the GoPro.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There is much to say regarding the filmic or photographic “off.” What happens to the “off” if the perspectives can be constantly changed, the image-producing devices themselves are constantly visible in the image? See also Chap. 11 by Florian Krautkrämer and Matthias Thiele in this volume.

  2. 2.

    In the GoPro community , there is a genre of filmed imitation of computer games from the so-called first-person perspective .

  3. 3.

    One issue that will arise from the conditions of interconnected digital images can already be divined here from the various image arrangements in the illustrated newspapers: The illustrated newspaper (the platform) is an environment/decision for a particular style and also for a particular public ( community). Quite early in photographic practice, a database logic was already in place for how the same images would appear in different surroundings. “It is therefore possible to create different interfaces to the same material. These interfaces may present different versions of the same work […]” (Manovich 1999, 86).

  4. 4.

    Jan Distelmeyer (2015; transl. by J.B.) described the interrelationship between aesthetics and dispositif as follows: “It inquires as to the relationship of the aesthetic appearance of medial constellations to their procedural and productive network of conditions, which opens up its room for play . It is every bit as variable as it is varied and can consist particularly of instrument-based components, institutions and traditions, laws, administrative measures and economic strategies, usage assumptions and enabled, suggested, or perhaps prevented practices, desired constellations as well as the diverse, discursive elements (from school, to advertising, to scientific debate), which provide information regarding what should be possible with this medium or the medial constellations and how.”;

  5. 5.

    See, e.g., the Instagram account of mustangwanted: https://www.instagram.com/mustangwanted/?hl=de (accessed September 16, 2016).

  6. 6.

    The “subjective perspective” relates more to the operating camera that occupies a subjective standpoint than to the subjective perspective of the photographers, who in some situations can be “objectively” in the image as an extension of the camera.

  7. 7.

    And sometimes the camera also takes the third-person perspective. On GoPro perspectives, see Bédard (2015).

  8. 8.

    Willi Ruge himself was already described as a hero of the camera, as Eskildsen (2014)points out: “The Hackebëils Illustrierte Zeitung article from 1930 celebrated the ‘heroes of the camera’ who braved the dangers of bodily harm, arrest by the authorities, and damage to their equipment. Ruge is respectfully cited as ‘one of the most daring contemporary press photographers.’ Acrobatic flying performances were all the rage, and Ruge’s fascination with airplanes and the public’s interest in aerial artistry had led to many photo reportages on the subject. In spring 1922, Franz Hailer became the first German pilot to successfully land his airplane on an alpine plateau, touching down below the Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany; Ruge accompanied him in the air and documented the feat” (3)

  9. 9.

    As is so common in US-American biographies of success, the story of the dishwasher is present here as well: Nick Woodman supposedly sold jewelry out of his VW bus in order to finance the founding of his company. What often goes unmentioned, however, is the starting capital of $200,000 USD he received from his parents after having already run an earlier start-up into the ground (see Mac 2013).

  10. 10.

    See, e.g., the YouTube video GoPro Commercial (2014).

  11. 11.

    Red Bull sponsors the event and GoPro delivers the cameras, as, e.g., in the case of the space jump by Felix Baumgartner. Baumgartner’s profile can be found on the project’s website: http://www.redbullstratos.com/the-team/felix-baumgartner/ (accessed February 12, 2016).

  12. 12.

    See also the GoPro website description of the HERO4: “Most advanced GoPro ever: HERO4 Black takes Emmy® Award-winning GoPro performance to the next level with our best image quality yet, plus a 2x more powerful processor that delivers super slow motion at 240 frames per second. Incredible high-resolution 4K30 and 2.7K601 video combines with 1080p120 and 720p240 slow motion to enable stunning, immersive footage of you and your world. Protune™ settings for both photos and video unlock manual control of Color, ISO Limit, Exposure and more. Waterproof to 131’ (40 m) with 12MP photos at 30 frames per second and improved audio, HERO4 Black is the ultimate life-capture solution for those who demand the best” (GoPro 2015a).

  13. 13.

    It can even survive a 3km fall (see Dent 2015).

  14. 14.

    See, e.g., GoPro upgrade kits on websites such as https://www.360rize.com/ (accessed September 16, 2016).

  15. 15.

    Patented in 1985 in the United States: “Abstract: A telescopic extender for supporting a compact camera includes a head member to be attached to the camera, a grip to be held and a telescopic rod member connecting the head member to the grip. A screw member is supported by the head member in a manner that the screw member is rotatable about the axis perpendicular to an extending and collapsing direction of the telescopic rod. The grip can accommodate therein the telescopic rod when the telescopic rod is completely collapsed” (US Patent 4530580 1985).

  16. 16.

    See also Chap. 2 by André Gunthert in this volume.

  17. 17.

    For example, in Pain and Gain (Bay 2013).

  18. 18.

    In a certain sense , Vilém Flusser (2001) Flusser already settled this in his description of the program of the camera: “The problem still remains that, despite the photographer’s intentions of diverging from the program, he is only able to capture what is contained in the camera program as virtual possibility. This is the aspect of the famous ‘inner dialectic of freedom’ with which we will be confronted in the post-industrial future” (21; transl. by J.B.). Elsewhere , Flusser (2000) states: “It is not the world out there that is real, nor is the concept within the camera’s program—only the photograph is real. The program of the world and the camera are only preconditions for the image, possibilities to be realized” (37)

  19. 19.

    Images can also be captured at an even higher resolution, in intervals, parallel to video.

  20. 20.

    The material basis—the image capture rate—of a video or film is still between 24 and 72 images per second in the artistic and entertainment fields. As a result, the same image is often repeated. For scientific or military applications, much higher image capture rates are possible (up to 90,000 Hz), as, e.g., with high-speed infrared cameras.

  21. 21.

    Using Henri Bergson (2002) here, we can move closer to an undivided movement—the reality; yet, on this path, we will not reach it: “To tell the truth, there never is real immobility, if we understand by that an absence of movement. Movement is reality itself” (, 257; Zilynska 2015, 146–151)

  22. 22.

    See, e.g., the gallery of “Living Pictures”: https://pictures.lytro.com (accessed October 15, 2015).

  23. 23.

    This has been the case in digital film production for quite some time and is becoming ever more common practice in digital photography with formats such as the raw, the interactive 360° panorama, not to mention the light field picture (LFP) of the Lytro camera.

  24. 24.

    As advertised on the Panono website: https://www.panono.com/ (accessed March 13, 2017). 360°-sphere cameras such as the Panono or arrays of GoPros allow a further variety of this constellation to appear (see also Woollaston 2013).

  25. 25.

    “The new images […] have a right side and a reverse, reversible and non-superimposable, like a power to turn back on themselves. They are the object of a perpetual reorganization, in which a new image can arise from any point whatever of the preceding image. The organization of space here loses its privileged directions, and first of all the privilege of the vertical which the position of the screen still displays, in favour of an omni-directional space which constantly varies its angles and co-ordinates, to exchange the vertical and the horizontal. And the screen itself, even if it keeps a vertical position by convention, no longer seems to refer to the human posture, like a window or a painting, but rather constitutes a table of information, an opaque surface on which are inscribed ‘data ’” (Deleuze 1989, 265).

  26. 26.

    This phenomenon is especially and beautifully observable in the YouTube video of a flying pelican on whose beak a GoPro was mounted in selfie perspective (see GoPro: Pelican Learns to Fly 2014).

  27. 27.

    Of course, nowadays this decision is often only made during postproduction.

  28. 28.

    GoPro self-description has been on the website of the GoPro, but disappeared. See, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20120215052010/http://gopro.com/

  29. 29.

    See also the YouTube video Wingsuit Community Flies On, In Honour of Mark Sutton | HeliBASE 74, Ep. 2 (2013).

  30. 30.

    As Anna Lederle has pointed out in her unpublished master’s thesis (2015, 59).

  31. 31.

    Brandon Mikesell is paraphrasing Jack London. The original is as follows: “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time” (London 1916, 1).

  32. 32.

    As Paul Frosh (2015) has generally observed for the selfie: “[T]aking selfies is not natural to the body: It is an acquired skill and requires practice, the attainment of limbic and manual dexterity (activating the right button or icon to take the picture while often holding the device at extreme angles to maximize headspace), and the calibration of the body to technical affordances and desirable representational outcomes. The selfie is both expressive and disciplinary: This is the duality of most kinds of sensory inscription. Just as the moving body is the platform for the smartphone, so the device is the picturing agency that motivates, justifies, and disciplines the body’s performance” (1614)

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  1. University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Winfried Gerling

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  1. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Julia Eckel

  2. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Jens Ruchatz

  3. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Sabine Wirth

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Gerling, W. (2018). Be a Hero: Self-Shoots at the Edge of the Abyss. In: Eckel, J., Ruchatz, J., Wirth, S. (eds) Exploring the Selfie. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57949-8_12

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