Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
SpringerLink
Log in

Selfies and Authorship: On the Displayed Authorship and the Author Function of the Selfie

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Exploring the Selfie

Abstract

One of the main defining features of the selfie—according to most of its definitions—is that it is “a photo that one has taken of oneself” (Oxford Dictionaries 2013)—which means: It is a photo that documents and at the same time exhibits an act of authorship. Specific visual indicators within the picture—for example, the outstretched arm or selfie stick of the self(ie) photographer, which points to the viewer’s/camera’s standpoint, as well as helping devices such as mirrors or remote-control releases, and so on—are read as visual signs that a photograph is “truly” a self-portrait or selfie. The chapter focuses on this special type of displayed authorship that seems to be so crucial for the selfie to be defined as such. The term “displayed authorship” is, on one hand, referring to the specific and aforementioned visual trait of the selfie being a photograph that shows its photographer in the moment of making the photo, thereby being at the same time a visual documentation of an act of authorship and its result, and, on the other hand, it pays attention to the word and concept of “selfie” as a terminological indicator that is used as an affirmation for this authorial gesture, even if the image itself may not show the standard indicators just mentioned. Building on these ideas, the chapter elaborates on the authorial specifics of the selfie by referring to current debates about this “new” type of self-image and by relating it to questions of authorship in the field of photography and literary theory. Using the concept of the “autoportraitistic pact” developed by Ingrid Hölzl as well as Michel Foucault’s definition of “the author function,” the chapter points to some general changes in the concept of the (authorial) self—not only within the context of art but in our current societies and mediatized environments as well.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 139.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    I’m referring here—as so many selfie researchers do—to the definition of the Oxford Dictionaries . But one could also take other definitions into account that circulate mostly on the web; e.g. the one from the English Wikipedia website, where the selfie is defined as a “a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or camera phone held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick” (Wikipedia contributors 2016) or the ones from the Urban Dictionaries website, where the selfie is defined as “A picture taken of yourself […]“(Urban Dictionary 2009; Definition 1) or as “[a] strange phenomenon in which the photographer is also the subject of the photograph, in a subversive twist on the traditional understanding of the photograph” (Urban Dictionary 2013; Definition 3).

  2. 2.

    See, for instance , Donnachie (2015, 69), Losh (2015, 1645–1646), or Saltz (2015).

  3. 3.

    See , e.g., Foucault (1977 [1969]) and Barthes (1981 [1968]) on this topic.

  4. 4.

    Peta made an attempt to fight for the (copy)rights of the monkey (which was identified by them as Naruato, a male macaque) but without success (see, e.g., Dailymail.com/Associated Press 2015).

  5. 5.

    For some outcomes of the legal debate see, e.g., Ohlheiser (2015) or Domonoske (2016).

  6. 6.

    Of course, the cited statement is posted as an advertisement blurb on the Rizzoli webpage as well.

  7. 7.

    Interesting for questions about the art status of selfies are, of course, events and projects within which selfies are explicitly declared part of an art project—see, e.g., Amalia Ulman’s “Excellences & Perfections” project on Instagram (2014; https://www.instagram.com/amaliaulman), “Showroom Girls” by Willem Popelier (2011; http://www.willempopelier.nl/showroomgirls.html), “The Middle Finger Response” by Guido Segnis (2013; http://guidosegni.com/work/the-middle-finger-response) or participatory projects like #whataboutyourselfie (https://www.facebook.com/What-about-your-selfie-1713343055561462/) or Flick-EU (http://flick.zkm.de). Additionally interesting are projects which connect selfies to (established forms of) art as it is the case with hashtags like #museumselfie (http://museumselfies.tumblr.com) or #artselfie (http://artselfie.com/) (all web sources accessed August 15, 2016). Other examples are exhibitions on selfies in art galleries and museums (e.g., National #Selfie Portrait Gallery [shown at the Moving Image Art Fair London, 17.–20.10.2013]; Selfies—Now and Then [Nationalmuseum Stockholm, 15.05.–31.08.2014]; Ego Update—The Future of Digital Identity [NRW Forum Düsseldorf, 19.09.2015–17.01.2016]; “I am here!” [“Ich bin hier!” Von Rembrandt zum Selfie; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe 31.10.2015–31.01.2016], etc.). For further debates on the artistic potential of selfies, see, e.g., Nease (2015), Ruchatz (2015), or Stephan (2015). Tifentale (2016) recently tried to shift the focus of the debate a bit by stating that “every self-portrait is not a selfie, but every selfie is a photograph,” pointing to the importance of the contemporaneity of the selfie, its dependence on the “networked camera,” and of photography theory and history for the conceptualization of the selfie as such.

  8. 8.

    See also Rose (1995) or Jannidis et al. (1999).

  9. 9.

    For example, when considering the 2014 New Portraits art project by Richard Prince, who took (rephotographed) selfies and other images from Instagram users as exhibits for his own art project without asking for permission (see Prince’s website http://www.richardprince.com/exhibitions/new-portraits and for further reading, e.g., Parkinson 2015). Additionally interesting are cases where the taking of selfies is discussed to become illegal—see, e.g., recent debates about selfies in voting booths (e.g., Victor 2016). For general juridical questions raised by the selfie, see, e.g., White (2014) or Klemchuk (2015).

  10. 10.

    See, e.g., Boehm (1997), Dülmen (1997), Rudolph (1998), Calabrese (2006), or Caduff (2007). Although the practice of creating self-images is traceable back to ancient times and further, most writings on the historical “predecessors” of the selfie reproduce the thesis that the modern idea of the artist as individual and genius was established in the fifteenth century and part of the “discovery of the individual” during the Renaissance. Other authors, such as James Hall (2014), emphasize that the so-called mirror myth of the Renaissance ignores the fact that there were practices of self-portraiture already established during the Middle Ages.

  11. 11.

    See, e.g., Hill-Reischl (2012) or other works focusing on the relation between photography and autobiography such as, e.g., Haverty Rugg (1997), Adams (1999), or Brunet (2009).

  12. 12.

    And, as has been pointed out already, this development is related to legal issues: “In the late nineteenth century, professional and amateur photographers actively struggled to define the role of authorship in photography, attempting to synthesize objective images of reality with creative artistry. At the heart of this struggle […] was the recognition of copyright , which would not only protect the rights of photographers and their photographs, but recognize photography as an artistic medium in its own right” (Hill Reischl 2012, 548).

  13. 13.

    But of course this view is problematic in some respects because even in these cases, the author/motif identity still seems to be dependent on the external definition of who is seen in the picture, and a photograph of someone first of all may (or even may not) only prove that there was someone who was photographed. We come back to this topic in the next section of this chapter.

  14. 14.

    As Paul Frosh 2015 describes it: “These arms assume the role of the pointing finger: They implicitly designate the absent hands and their held devices as the site of pictorial production” (1610). In reference to Boehm, Hölzl describes hand s and eyes as the challenging “blind spots” of self-portraiture: “Because self-perception and self-representation show a ‘blind spot’ when it comes to the eye, the self-portrait cannot claim full representability. Besides the eyes it is the hand as well, which is challenging for the draftsman/painter: As long as it is drawing , it cannot be drawn; as long as it is drawn, it cannot be drawing” (Hölzl 2008, 97; transl. by J.E.).

  15. 15.

    Losh (2015, 1654) describes this feature of photographies as “transparent mediation .”

  16. 16.

    On the topic of ‘machine self-portraits’, see Chap. 13 by Lisa Gotto in this volume.

  17. 17.

    The title of the book, originally published in German, can be translated as “The Autoportraitistic Pact: On the Theory of the Photographic Self-Portrait Using the Example of Samuel Fosso.” An English version of some of Hölzl’s main arguments can be found in Hölzl (2009).

  18. 18.

    Hölzl refers to Derrida ’s writings in this respect, who—in his book on the Memoirs of the Blind (1993)—describes the uncertainty of the self-portrait itself and its dependence on external markers: “Whether it be a question of the identity of the object drawn by the draftsman or of the draftsman who is himself drawn, be he the author of the drawing or not, the identification remains probable, that is, uncertain, withdrawn from any internal reading, an object of inference and not of perception. […] This is why the status of the self-portrait of the self-portraitist will always retain a hypothetical character. It always depends on the juridical effect of the title, on this verbal event that does not belong to the inside of the work but only to its parergonal border. The juridical effect calls upon his memory more than upon his perception” (64; emphasis in original).

  19. 19.

    Hölzl (2008) strongly emphasizes that this addition to the picture is possible only in a verbal, language-based way and not a pictorial way: “Thus, the self-portrait signature is an activity external to the image, not in a factual spacial sense (it can be in the picture as well), but in terms of mediality . The signature is a nonpictorial, verbal information, additional to the visual information from which the likeness but not the identicalness of the portrayed with the executing artist can be deduced” (108; transl. by J.E.).

  20. 20.

    In fact, Hölzl herself names these visual hints a “rhetorical trick,” thus relating them metaphorically to the field of speech and language. Other authors writing on the phenomenon of selfies point to the analogies between the use of words and pictures in the process of self-depiction , too; e.g., Frosh (2015): “More prosaically , and perhaps more significantly, selfies are a genre of personal reflexivity . This is true of all selfies by definition: They show a self, enacting itself. Selfies extend the photographic grammar of everyday communication : They are an instantly recognizable visual correlate to the linguistic self-enactment routinely performed by reflexive verbs” (1621).

  21. 21.

    I am using the more general term, “self-image ,” here instead of “self-portrait ” because using the latter would still lead to a debate about the definition of “the (self-)portrait” in general and whether this term can only be used for works in the field of art or in mundane contexts, too. For the current debate I refer again , e.g., to Donnachie (2015) and Tifentale (2016); “Yet, such historic self-portraits are not selfies (or even proto-selfies) merely because they are photographic and self-portraits, and to describe them as such risks reducing their individual accomplishment or significance. To seek the origin of the selfie in previous genres of self-representation also becomes counterproductive for while there may be some formal or functional overlap between the selfie and previous genres of self-portraiture, the selfie consistently emerges as a contemporary manifestation, a discrete entity and/or activity. Through its composition, mode of production, networked distribution, consumption and sheer ubiquity, the selfie is unique in its genre , it cannot be simply reduced to a digital remediation of the self-portrait.” (Donnachie 2015, 55)

  22. 22.

    Paul Frosh (2015), too, points to these processes of signification characteristic for the selfie, but additionally emphasizes the media-reflexive potential of their constellation: “The body is inscribed in part into an already existing order of interpersonal signification—gestures have meanings in face-to-face interactions—but it is also inscribed as a figure for mediation itself: It is simultaneously mediating (the outstretched arm executes the taking of the selfie) and mediated (the outstretched arm becomes a legible and iterable sign within selfies of, among other things, the selfieness of the image)” (1611).

  23. 23.

    Berlatsky (2013), e.g., disagrees with this opinion when he writes: “[…] it would be nice if we could take the time to look at individual selfies as individual selfies—portraits that represent different people, rather than a single, monotonous, multi-headed self .” Interestingly, he does so in an article that is titled and thus proclaims “Selfies Are Art.” That seems to strengthen my thesis that the idea of individuality is strongly bound to ideas of “classical art” while the self of the selfie appears to be challenged by deindividualization and dissolution in(to) the masses.

  24. 24.

    On the topic of the temporality of the selfie, see also Chap. 10 by Sabine Wirth in this volume.

  25. 25.

    Of course, the idea of “the individual ,” as an invention of the modern age, has been challenged and questioned in its unity over and over again. But the discussions about the “crisis of the individual” seem to be of fundamental importance within the debates about neoliberalism and the subject as “entrepreneurial self ” (see Foucault [2008 (1978–1979), 2005 (1981–1982)) and Bröckling (2016)]).

  26. 26.

    Foucault (1977) ascribes four characteristics to discourses with author function: “[…] the author function is tied to the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine, and articulate the realm of discourses; it does not operate in a uniform manner in all discourses at all times, and in any given culture; it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a text to its creator, but through a series of precise and complex procedures; it does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individual insofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to a series of subjective positions that individuals of any class may come to occupy ” (130–131). Of course, these characteristics do not directly fit the public discussions about the selfie in all means, but they are adaptable: (1) the legal and institutional systems can be seen in the hardware and software environments supporting the selfie practice, the institutions developing and selling them, the cultural contexts producing and negotiating them, etc.; (2) the selfie discourse may be an example of the manifoldness of the author function in the historical and cultural context that is now; (3) although selfies are in fact images that may be “defined by the spontaneous attribution of a text to its creator,” when not focusing on the individual images only but on the function of “selfie” as a concept and term, as a more general but still defining and labeling equivalent to the author name, one could say that “the selfie” has undergone (and still evolves from) “a series of precise and complex procedures” to manifest itself as term, concept, practice, and topic; (4) the described manifoldness of the egos created by a discourse with author function, the ambivalence of the variety of subjects and subject positions in contrast to the idea of the “one individual” that is evoked by it, can be assigned to the selfie as well as it creates manifold subject perspectives and subject concepts in its individual and supra-individual seriality and its global ubiquity.

  27. 27.

    When searching for hasthags like the aforementioned on Instagram , first only the images are shown. Further information like the (user ) names or comments are visible only when one clicks on single images that are linked to the person’s personal Instagram profile. These sites, again, may provide only a user name that does not have to be identical to a supposed-to-exist real-world name of the person. The selfie (combined with the profile website) thus only seems to prove that there is someone who took a photo of him-/herself to be part of the hashtag collection, but all this is not dependent on an external, distinctive and factual anchoring of the shown subject with a specific person beyond the web profile. The selfie—as a substitute for the self—functions on its own—as an act of purely visual self-depiction that is a self in itself by just symbolically referencing the activity of an individual. The individual agency of the subject /author/artist/user is inscribed in the image itself and not dependent anymore on a nametag or external identification.

  28. 28.

    For current studies on the challenges that the concept of authorship undergoes in digital media environments and on questions of collaborative media works, see, e.g., Chris and Gerstner (2013) or Gray and Johnson (2013).

Bibliography

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Julia Eckel

  2. Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Julia Eckel

Authors
  1. Julia Eckel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Julia Eckel

  2. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Jens Ruchatz

  3. Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Sabine Wirth

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Eckel, J. (2018). Selfies and Authorship: On the Displayed Authorship and the Author Function of the Selfie. In: Eckel, J., Ruchatz, J., Wirth, S. (eds) Exploring the Selfie. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57949-8_7

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation