The Selfie in Consumer Culture

This chapter analyzes the selfie from interdisciplinary perspectives, and focuses on the selfie as branding tool. The selfie, rooted as it is in participatory consumer culture of social media, can be characterized as a significant form of consumer self-expression, while at the same time serving as an increasingly important digital communication tool. Visual artists, including painters and photographers, dominate how art historians think of self-portraiture. Self-portraits can be seen as "in the vanguard of cultural developments, influencing their own society's sense of identity and selfhood." Photography's development meant that individuals might possess various portraits of themselves, rather than one, definitive painting or sketch. Artistic self-portraits offer an instructive starting point for thinking about the historical context of today's selfie. Some were photographic self-portraits that clearly would have been called selfies if produced today.