ME , MYSELFIE & I
There was this email in my inbox from the Saatchi Gallery inviting me to the preview of their “ From Selfie to Self-Expression ” exhibition . Great , I thought ! I didn ’ t need to think twice if I go or not . Name put on the list right away ! I even submitted a selfie of myself for their selfie contest , yes , no regrets ! I saw some beautiful , some creative but also some super boring selfies submitted by people from all over Europe .
By the way , do you remember when you took your first selfie ? I think I took mine back in the early 2000 ’ s . Why taking a picture of myself and not asking someone else ? I remember I wanted to keep it a bit intimate , I wanted to decide how I look in my picture , I wanted to do it for myself and enjoy the
9 outcome by myself first . I didn ’ t feel the need to share it with anyone else . This obsession for sharing our selfies and the addiction for likes started only with using Facebook and other social media platforms and I was , of course , also “ infected ” by it . However , what I sometimes did was taking a picture of mine to transform it into something arty . Like Andy Warhol did . I used filters from my photo editor programs , copied and coloured my pictures and much more . I enjoyed the process , the experience of creating something unexpected with my own picture . It was fun !
Back to this email from the Saatchi Gallery , when saving the preview event to my calendar I thought “ FI- NALLY ”!! It was time to do such an exhibition . How can we ignore the art of selfies when even Kim Kardashian published a whole book with only her selfies ? For several years , we ’ ve been living in a time of increased selfie creation and recreation . The definition of a selfie says that they are digitally evolved forms of self-portraits . I ’ m still not sure if they really are self-portraits . Are they ? What do you think ?
Well , remember selfies in the sense of self-portraits are nothing new at all . The Saatchi Gallery ’ s exhibition made that very clear and draw the line between the old masters ( like Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh who painted self-portraits already so many decades ago ) and our smartphone generation today . What is the difference between Warhol ’ s or Rembrandt ’ s self-portraiture and our selfies ? That de-