Selfies may not be as impressive as a Rembrandt, but completely dismissing them as superficial and irrelevant is arrogant. They capture moments of confidence and joy, accomplishments, and yes, artistry – And that is a beautiful thing.
However, the way we capture and present ourselves on social media tends to be an –at least slightly– optimized version of reality (but hasn't it always been this way?). How much of what we see online is still "real"? Well, data doesn't lie, so what does the algorithm say about me? How does it reflect 'myself' (my data) back at me and does this correspond enough with my self-image that it could be considered a self-portrait (almost) as great as a Rembrandt?
I draw a lot of self-portraits that never see the light of day, the few I do share make it because I consider them "representative" enough (whatever that means) – Can my algorithmic profile, which I put together into a "portrait" (in the broadest sense) meet this requirement as well?
To find out, I spent a day collecting screenshots of my personalized ads (only a selection is shown here. Have fun speculating about which ones I'm hiding), and wasn't disappointed (maybe a little concerned, but I asked for it): A solid 80% of them were pretty close to my preferences, either thematically or visually = Algorithms passed the test.
So after passing the 'representivity-check', have I shared this with others? No, it was a course project and after that, life went on. Still, I took something away from the course (like the motivation to scrub as much information of myself off the internet as possible): My idea of what self-portraits and selfies are and what they mean changed significantly. Neither has to be all that deep, but sometimes they are. I still don't get teary-eyed when I see a selfie but I feel full thinking about how they seemingly felt so good about themselves that they felt the need to share it because isn't that lovely?
This was an assignment in the context of a theoretical course from the photography department about selfportraits/selfies throughout the history of the medium.
