The Selfie as Self‑Portrait. Who Am I in the Images? – Self‑Representation Then and Now

The selfie has since become the most widespread mode of self-portraiture in the modern era. It is quick, simple, and accessible to almost everyone, resulting in tens of thousands of images shared across online platforms today. One major criticism from the once-emblematic aesthete Susan Sontag toward photography was that whenever the photographer and the subject depicted are not the same person, the photographer inevitably occupies a position of power in their relationship, seeing the subject of the photograph in a way the subject could never see themselves. With the selfie, however, this position is assumed by the subject themselves: photographer and subject coincide, allowing control over the image to rest in the same hands.

Yet such an arrangement does not automatically lead to self-portraiture. So what, then, turns a selfie into a self-portrait? What cultural phenomena contribute to this distinction and its evolution? In her essay on the subject,^[4] Alise Tifentale argues that the selfie is not merely an image but a complex visual phenomenon produced together with metadata (time, place, likes, comments), in which image-making and display technologies are integral to self-presentation. Tifentale asserts that historically and culturally, the selfie differs significantly from the traditional painted self-portrait.

Audience attention, feedback, and the use of widely recognizable symbols have become almost indispensable. Drawing on the hypothesis proposed by Alise Tifentale and Lev Manovich,^[5] individuals compete for social media rewards, such as increased likes or new followers. They distinguish three types of selfies: casual selfies—friendly, everyday images most commonly encountered on social media; professional selfies—images produced within an aesthetic competition context; and designed selfies—forms of consciously constructed visual self-representation. All of this underscores that the selfie is not an uninhibited, private act, but rather part of a competitive system tied to social status and visibility. Yet if the selfie is merely a product of mass society, can it truly be called a self-portrait?

Meanwhile, as Ana Peraica argues,^[6] the selfie is not only about what we see but also about how and where we look at ourselves, relocating the representation of identity into a new—both literal and metaphorical—space. Subsequently, what distinguishes an artistic self-portrait from an ordinary, everyday selfie? According to Susan Bright,^[7] self-portraiture is not merely a form of self-reflection but a powerful, expressive, and identity-forming practice. Through the use of the body, masks, roles, and artistic performance, self-portraits articulate complex social, gendered, and personal identities. Bright traces the evolution of self-portraiture since the mid-19th century and, through the analysis of seventy-five contemporary works, examines how these images reflect upon questions of national, personal, gender, and bodily identity.

And who could demonstrate this phenomenon more convincingly than Cindy Sherman, the uncrowned queen of self-portraiture? Her characters emerge from countless corners of society, yet beneath the grotesque representation and distorted facial expressions, Sherman herself is always present. From this perspective, it may seem that every self-portrait could be understood as a selfie—but not every selfie qualifies as a self-portrait. An image becomes a form of self-representation only when its creator intends it to be. For this to happen, a deliberate search and underlying conceptual content are required; a fraction-of-a-second exposure made with a smartphone is not always enough. At the same time, this does not mean that certain everyday selfies cannot cross this boundary, revealing something of their makers’ inner worlds.

Cindy Sherman is by no means the only photographic artist concerned with visual self-representation. Francesca Woodman is best known for her black-and-white photographs featuring herself and other women. Her lyrical, melancholic images—often capturing her own vulnerability—have been widely discussed. Another iconic figure in this genre is Robert Mapplethorpe, who also illustrates how essential the search for the self can be through photography. These works function almost like a game played with the soul, testing how far one can go, what different personas evoke within us, and where we ultimately encounter our true selves.

A contemporary representative of the selfie is David Uzochukwu, an Austrian-Nigerian photographer, who began working with self-portraiture as a teenager. His practice centers on themes of resilience and belonging, often addressing themes of identity, vulnerability, and self-construction. He was among the early adopters to fully utilize Photoshop’s expansive toolkit, creating dreamlike image series that depart from reality.

Today, the rise of artificial intelligence has opened yet another chapter in the field of selfies and image manipulation. We can now create virtually any image of ourselves and ask AI to rework it in a chosen artistic style or to remove and add elements at will. The question is whether the constant production of selfies is thus the culmination of our own vanity. Are we increasingly obsessed with surface aesthetics, like Narcissus gazing into the reflection of the water—only now confronting the camera lens instead?

This concern is addressed by the phenomenon of the anti-selfie, which consists of photographs—often taken with smartphones—that deliberately avoid showing the subject’s face. Such images may function as a reaction against the narcissism or hypersexualization associated with conventional selfies, but they can also serve as tools for exploring body-image issues or for capturing moments that are less staged. One way or another, art historians largely agree that self-portrait photography, or selfie-making, remains one of the most popular photographic genres, both historically and in contemporary visual culture.