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No accessFULL TEXTPhotofileJournal Article01 March 2014

The wide-screen selfie: Emma Thomson's 'Take your best shot'

    The democratic artform of photography and the digital revolution of social media have seen the creation of a new audience of performers. Andy Warhol's maxim of 'everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes' needs to acknowledge that it is now our first 15 minutes. We have become adept at being photographed - we know how to look our best, what poses work and how to use visual shorthand to express universal feelings. The 'selfie' - ubiquitously littering the web - provides aspects of control over how one aspires to be presented. Once uploaded to the internet, these self-directed head shots are ripped from their context, discarded like so much junk mail. Irrespective of the history of photographic portraiture, selfies exist as onanistic statements that no longer speak of a time or place, but merely the thoughts of the subject as if seen through the illuminated eyes of their digital visage.

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