September 19, 2015 on The Creator's Project
"How To Draw Your Selfie-Portrait" by Annie Armstrong
Carla Gannis is an artist who is using selfies that she takes on her iPhone, iPad, or laptop camera to create what she calls a selfie-portrait. After taking the selfie, her process usually includes drawing over the image digitally and adding narrative elements to it. Through her selfie-portraits, she addresses ideas about the self in the broader context of the 21st century with consideration of corporate and brand identity, surveillance culture, and digital persona. Her images stray from conventional representation of people - she often portrays herself with unnatural skin, hair, and eye colors in strange and abstracted settings. Furthermore, some pieces include multiple iterations of her visage in the same work.I'm really excited about Carla Gannis' selfie-portraits.
Though the visual language and general aesthetic is not my cup of tea, I love her concepts and I love the words she has said about the subject. As someone who makes a lot of art through self portraiture (whether I'm illustrating a selfie I took or controlling my DSLR with a remote from 10 feet away, or even making performative gestures on social media with concepts of the self), I love seeing other artists' perspectives on selfies and presentation of the self. aThe selfie is a particularly interesting subject of artistic consideration. When we take selfies, we tend to work with our most flattering angles and the best lighting we can get with careful consideration of how to conceal or draw attention away from blemishes and imperfections. We are literally creating an idealized image of ourselves. Our selfies are the truest version of how we see ourselves, and as a generation that sees and experiences everything through a smartphone screen, the idea of the gaze through the digital is holds a particularly interesting weight.
I love Gannis' statement, "I am the original photographic source for all of the selfies...However, as I work on them, they become less "me" and more about a human actor or avator set within numerous contexts: imagine, cope, and finding virtual escape in the 21st century." I'm really interested in the idea that [what I believe is] the most intimate and personal perception of the self can become depersonalized and abstracted from the self and come to represent an icon of contemporary personhood. I think a lot about the argument that Gannis addresses - that "we, as humans, lay claim to our lives, our identities, and desire to imprint something of ourselves on the walls and pages of communication networks." I look to this article (and similar artistic endeavors) in the formulation of my final project.