For this first Selfie Post I’m deliberately sidestepping the full-self, only-me-in-the-frame selfie by posting this example from the new feature in the Google Arts & Culture app where you can take a selfie and it will evaluate your face against its database of pictures and come up with some semblance of a match. I say some “some semblance” because, well, from the above picture you can see that the Portrait of Paulus Cornelisz van Beresteyn was only 47% compatible with my face. And, really, there’s both sides here – he’s got a better beard (one for old Paulus), but I’ve got better glasses (you don’t even have glasses, Corn-hole Cornelisz!). He’s got more hair, but is that really a plus? I don’t think so. Finally, who do you think is more fun at a party?
Wait, why did you hesitate?! Me! Of course it’s me – the one in the quail shirt? With the goofy smile? Heck yeah.
To try yourself — and you know you want to — you can download Google’s free Arts & Culture app and then scroll down to the entry for “Is your portrait in a museum?” You can share the results on social media and even though the feature hasn’t been out too long, I’m sure you’ve seen this on your BookFace or Insta feeds quite a bit already.
One of the reasons this meme has tickled me so has to do with the collision between the selfie and art.There’s some wonderful academic exploration into this area that goes way beyond anything I could add to the discussion, except that I’d like you to take a moment the next time you see any selfie, even the most hastily-snapped, alcohol-induced selfie you come across and think about it critically for a moment. Not necessarily the subject — though there’s another exploration to be done on that — but on the medium itself. I’m still not over the revolution that digital photography has created (I recommend this story from Marketplace about the creation of the very first digital camera). Straddling the line between film and digital cameras, I wonder quite a bit what my childhood would look like if there were ubiquitous cameras around (oh, the humanity!). For that reason I harbor an intense empathy to folks growing up now who’s every misstep is permanently captured on phone cameras.
Paulus Cornelisz van Beresteyn almost certainly paid more for his portrait than I did for my phone, and yet Googling him turned up that image and nothing else; forgotten but for a 17th century selfie… I know if I did a little more research I could dig up some more dirt on Paulus, but researching (beyond Google) is becoming as much a lost art as portraiture. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to sit on my proverbial porch and shake my stick at a contemporary culture with ADHD. Quite the contrary, my point is culture has been forgetful of the subject for some time. While I don’t think in three hundred years a Kardashian selfie will hang in the National Gallery, I do think there’s more to a selfie than a purely throw-away gesture.
Perhaps this hasn’t been the most coherent first selfie post, and, indeed, it’s late. But you know what? One selfie down, a whole lot more to go!