Streams of the Self

This article offers a working draft of a larger qualitative analysis of the popular smartphone application Instagram. It offers a reading of the ubiquitous contemporary form of self-portraiture, the selfie, locating its origin in the longer evolution of digital photography into a form of social media. Though its function as a basic self-portrait and signifier for our various social profiles appears straightforward, it has somehow become the ‘face’ of online sociality and subjectivity, a portrait of the promise and peril of our online existence. And yet, a closer look at the various feeds and streams in which the selfie appears reveals that it is one genre amongst many, no more or less common than a variety of landscapes, still-lifes, and other modes of photographic observation. Taken together, these various views of the world reveal an emplaced mode of image-driven autobiography, one far more complex and nuanced than a straightforward meme would appear to be. Image Credit: Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash