How selfies reflect a new generation of artists

There's more to selfies than meets the eye, especially among the millennial artists of "The Selfie Generation." 

What exactly are selfies, and why are they everywhere? Whether you happen upon them on Instagram or Snapchat, or literally run into people taking cellphone photos of themselves on the street, the selfie is a pervasive yet elusive aspect of how people visually communicate today.

More than just a picture, selfies provide a lens through which other people view you, and a peek into how you see yourself. With that in mind you can see why artists like Van Gog and Guagin have always painted selfies. And then like now the selfie is ripe for critique by artists. 

Artists of the selfie generation use social media to build their persona or brand, while also using themselves in their work. In this IRL-URL fluid space, they crisscross from the digital to the physical, exploring and playing with the overlap between the two.

One of the new breed of digital artists is Brooklyn-based RAFiA Santana, 26, who uses selfies both to create an archive of herself and to make sure she is seen the way she wants. 

Santana comes from a family of artists — her mother is a photographer and archivist, and her father is a photographer and filmmaker — and she started using a camera as a teenager. Her website has a category for “selfie,” but this wasn’t on purpose. It just happened because she tagged a lot of images with #selfie, and that created a larger tag cloud.

Santana says, “The main draw of the selfie is that we can shape our own narratives. A selfie is super-empowering, being able to show yourself as you are.”

The power of the public self

Selfies are intimate because they represent a personal experience that is also social, taken for the express purpose of sharing.  This gives selfies a level of self-conscious authenticity that is different from even a candid photograph—they are more raw and less perfect.

There is a projected and curated vulnerability displayed through selfies that traverses issues of privacy online.

Harlo Holmes, of the Freedom of the Press Foundation says, “There is indeed a lot of power in creating a public self; everyone is going to share stuff, but make sure you use technology in a way that only you get to choose which version of yourself exists for public consumption.”