The MySpace Self-Portrait

If you spend any time on MySpace you know that our current youth generation (which I'm only barely growing out of) is obsessed with taking photos of ourselves holding our cameras in mirrors. After looking at the above photo (which breaks the norms of this genre, something I will get into at the end of this post), I began wondering WHY we do it, and why MySpace is the forum for this type of self-portrait.

Please note: I'm not going to provide examples of this type of photography since it would require me to violate someone's (very public) private life. Also, I feel icky looking at strangers' MySpace pages.

The first answer to the question of "why" is functional and simple: we desire self-portraits for MySpace so we can show people what we look like in a creative way, and one way to do that is to take our cameras into our bathrooms and snap photos with the camera visible. Sometimes we use flash to create a blinding light that looks "neat." As for motivation, there's not much more than that.

When examined, though, I think this new genre can be seen as a reflexive/modernist impulse born from an individualistic and self-centered media-driven society. To begin, it is reflexive in that it is a way to acknowledge that the person who took the photo and the person in the photo are the same. This reveals the most important element of any photograph, that is, the reason the photo was taken at all. Since this question of "what is this photo about" is almost always answered with "the person taking the photo," that makes it an individualistic impulse in my mind. MySpace itself is built entirely for self-creation and -expression, and a photo that self-consciously declares "I took this myself" fits in perfectly. A close relative to this is the holding-the-camera-as-far-away-as-possible self-portrait.

And if this genre of self-portrait is reflexive by drawing attention to itself as a created art, then it goes without saying that it is modernist. It envelopes the very act of photography into its subject matter, and forefronts the instant digital world-cum-gallery that allowed it to exist. Notice too the highly manipulated and artificial poses reflecting the self-interest and self-promotion of the subject; thanks to digital cameras, we can take this photo over and over till we get it right. Mirrors are an essential part of this genre as well, as digital photos and mirrors are both ways for us to look at ourselves. A photograph isn't really a person, but a photo of a mirror is even less so. In this sense, the MySpace self-portrait requires conceptual thinking; the viewer must subconsciously compute the relationship between the subject, the camera, and the mirror (the latter of which is often not visible, unlike in our subject photo).

And on a final level, this form of photo also conveniently reveals the type of camera we are using, which makes it perhaps a materialist impulse as well, especially considering those people who take pictures of their abs or their bikinis in this fashion (wealth and beauty, what a combo).

The photo above masterfully undoes some of the basics of this formula, replacing specific self with a generic self by obscuring the subject/photographer's face. This forces our focus towards the location (the car) and the urban landscape. The photographer seems more concerned with capturing the landscape than herself, yet she is still the dominating force in the photo. Though it is possible she took many versions of this photo thanks to digital photography, the windswept hair and unposed face indicate that this was not a glamor shot. She has not photographed an exceptionally beautiful part of this urbania either, making even the roller coasters that sweep through the photo look mundane. Since we are leaving this location behind, the photo acts like a dour version of a tourist photo at the end of a trip, signaling the farewell to a location that once may have offered excitement. Now the photographer merely sits there, recording the event, retaining the individualism and consciously challenging us with the act of recording. It's quite a step up from the typical MySpace self-portrait.

Here's my own pathetic attempt to join this genre, taken with a Macintosh computer's built-in EyeSight camera:


Yeah.