selfie
Forty years ago Susan Sontag suggested that we are addicted to the need to affirm and enhance reality through photographs, and that ‘Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it…’ (‘On Photography’ 1977 p 24).
The advent of the selfie takes this to a new level and adds a further irony: the experience (in this case of visiting and seeing Tower Bridge) is had, not by looking through or past the camera towards Tower Bridge, but by turning one's back to it. In capturing the moment as a selfie, the individual or group becomes the subject of the photo; the experience being recorded (seeing Tower Bridge) is relegated to the role of backdrop to a picture of the individual or group.
The ‘selfie-takers’ look at themselves while trying to fit Tower Bridge into the photo; and the resultant photo says 'look at me'... not, 'look at what I saw'.
The advent of the selfie takes this to a new level and adds a further irony: the experience (in this case of visiting and seeing Tower Bridge) is had, not by looking through or past the camera towards Tower Bridge, but by turning one's back to it. In capturing the moment as a selfie, the individual or group becomes the subject of the photo; the experience being recorded (seeing Tower Bridge) is relegated to the role of backdrop to a picture of the individual or group.
The ‘selfie-takers’ look at themselves while trying to fit Tower Bridge into the photo; and the resultant photo says 'look at me'... not, 'look at what I saw'.
