BRIDGE 1
- Write about the experience of photographing the self in Studio. How is writing about the self different than photographing, and so on? How is it the same? Is taking a “Selfie” different than drawing a self-portrait? If so, how? If not, why not? This assignment should incorporate the idea of identity and self and selfies started in the Saltz reading and picked up in Studio.
- 2-3 pages typed, double spaced, time new roman twelve point font.
How selfie differs from self writing and self-portrait
Jiahuan Cheng (Eric)
It can be traced to 1839 when the first selfie was taken by Robert Cornelius, an American photographer who spent one minute finishing the whole process. Since the invention of smart phones, the selfie camera became a indispensable function that gradually took the place of selfie into a higher level in our personal life. But for me, the selfie is absolutely different than self writing or self-portrait.
Before the selfie was commonly accepted by public, writing and self-portrait was the most universal and convenient way to illustrate oneself. And the history of writing and self-portrait is much more longer than that of the selfie. Selfie and other methods of self description are both productions of culture or need for life, but their meanings, at least in this period of time, are mostly different.
If we rack our brains to think, there are some common aspects between selfie and describing yourself by words; you control every part of creation; you can easily decorate your words by replacing each words for many times or fix your selfie with different filters and show your best look to others. Even look at the aim of writing and photographing, they are great record for you to speak to the world. However, as we look at taking selfies and writing about oneself deeply, self writing and self photographing has extremely more aspects of differences from the selfie. Writing about oneself is a method to record by words; it uses words to create a picture in one’s mind but not as what photographing does: to see a picture directly through your eyes. While I was writing about myself, I needed to take time selecting the ‘appropriate’ word to describe myself as detail as possible. I would love to describe as much my inside characteristics as possible but not like what selfie does, which only pictures a general look from the outside. I wanted to let surroundings know the best side of me, especially those who have never seen me before. Writing about oneself can easily take him or her into a circumstance of exaggerating the truth; writers will exaggerate what they have done positively and minimize those behaviors that were not so good based on his own opinion. In another words, a Fake situation. And for self photographing, things are different. Unlike writers focusing on the inside, people who take selfies will pay most attention to the outside: clothing, facial expression or even the environment in which they stand. The last time I was required to take a selfie was in class, and I tended to make strange faces or create a really effective environment in order to get the viewer’s attention. Furthermore, I haven’t taken selfies for a long time, and when I looked back to those selfies I took during my graduation vacation with my classmates, I could hardly remember how my actual feeling was that moment but smiling faces on the photos. Unlike people who write about themselves and only share within a small group of people, those individuals who takes selfie only have one goal, which is to spread the photo as far as they can and let more people know in order to fill a blank in their heart. From my point of view, writing about the self is a way of examine oneself but taking selfie mostly shows the opposite direction which is relying on what other people think.
The widespread of selfie began when smart phones were introduced to the world; it is a production of modern technology. The Difference of selfie with self-portrait comes from Renaissance when people interested in looking themselves through mirror. The format of self-portrait prosper until the end of 19th Century when people that time mainly focus on the people. They release their instinct and defined self-portrait a new meaning that contained feeling, balance and visual beauty. Self-portrait focuses on realities and deep feelings. But selfie, from my point of view, absolutely cannot be simply equal to self-portrait for the reason that most selfie does not mean anything at all but purely showing the world about existence. There is a heated smartphone App in China called “Meitu Show Show” which is an photo editing App that only aim at editing selfie. The functions inside the App such as brighten skin, larger eyes, remove pimple make your selfie looks way more different can the real one. I think what this App offers is a superficial idea of beauty, and it will be more clear if the description shorten into fake self-portrait. Unlike the production of hundreds years of culture, selfie is only a production of boring modern trend.
Van Gogh creates more than 40 self-portraits within four years, you can see a despair, self doubt painful painter through his eyes, but how we can or even have an intention to guess any of those people’s feeling through a dull selfie? This is why selfie and self-portrait are absolutely different.
I have read part of a conversation which briefly like the following: If you paint a still life, a collector would love it, same as a scenery, a naked woman. But when you are painting the collectors self-portrait in a wrong way, he will be nervous because he will never know what painters imply after the self-portrait. And I would like to say, so does self writing, but selfie doesn’t.
