On December 31, 2020, the Riga-based Low Gallery published the second edition of The Crisis Newsletter (Krīzes Vēstnesis), for which I had the pleasure to write a short essay on the daily photographic practice on Instagram: “#dailyphotography and #fail”
Read moreThe Selfie: More and Less than a Self-Portrait, an invited talk at the New School
In the invited talk “The Selfie: More and Less than a Self-Portrait” I will argue that the selfie is neither a low-brow offspring of the noble tradition of self-portrait in art, nor a democratic and popular version of self-portraiture in general. Instead, I will emphasize the specific conditions of making and viewing selfies as part of a live stream of updates on platforms such as Instagram.
Read moreWhy every self-portrait is not a selfie, but every selfie is a photograph
This article, commissioned by Riga Photography Biennial 2016, focuses on the role of technologies in defining and understanding the selfie. I examine the difference between the way datasets of selfies are being constructed for research and comparison, and how selfies are consumed and experienced in their natural habitat, the live flow of images on Instagram.
Read moreMaking sense of the selfie
This article belongs to a series of related articles and book chapters that I have written since the late 2014 and early 2015 about photography in social media and selfies in particular. All these writings are based on research project Selfiecity that I co-authored with Lev Manovich, Moritz Stefaner, Mehrdad Yazdani, Dominikus Baur, Daniel Goddemeyer, Nadav Hochman, and Jay Chow.
Read moreArt of the masses: From Kodak Brownie to Instagram
This article touches upon some of the inherent complexities of understanding the selfie. Seeking for valid methods of theorizing and contextualizing the selfie, this article attempts to combine insights from the perspectives of history of photography and art history, digital humanities, and software studies.
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