The "Stock Photo Selfie"

This is something I unearthed from my days in art school. It is about the connection between stock photos and selfies and the excessiveness/bizarreness of an actual stock photo of someone taking a selfie :

Self-portraiture has been around since the invention of the daguerreotype, making way for the establishment of the stock photo industry in the 1920’s. With the development of new technology and trends, the “self-portrait” is now under the guise of the “selfie” and the collection of stock imagery has moved from physical archives to online servers. Both are a part of  capitalist commodity culture since they exist for mass profit and consumption.

The redundancy of stock photo selfie then, shows the hyper-commodification of contemporary culture. It is a document of someone documenting themselves, self promotion within industry promotion, a glossed finish atop a glossed finish.  

The stock photo selfie is symbolic of the proliferation of internet and media culture. Similarly, memes also represent our hyper-media culture, only they exist as a “free enterprise” - no one can legitimately own a meme, but the popular demand drives production. In contrast, someone can own a stock photo and can sell it for any price they want, but why would someone want a stock photo of someone taking a selfie instead of the selfie itself? Surely there are many reasons for this- advertisement for “selfie-sticks”, a brochure on the joys of selfie taking, or dissimilarly, on the detrimental effects the selfie — as a gateway for compulsive narcissism and technological entitlement. However, disregarding the justifications for its existence and looking purely at the semiotics of the image, it not only depicts the excessiveness of media culture, it shows the hedonism directed by the phenomenology of selfie culture.

Hedonism, while not particularly a bad philosophy in my opinion- as I am a firm believer in, “if it feels good do it,” does not mix well with a society that defines their happiness via “likes” and who over-indulges in scopophilic behavior. As a mediated image, the selfie is separate from the physical self, yet connected to the self-worth of the individual. The worthiness of the selfie as a commodity is based on the market of social media acceptance. The quest on part of the selfie-taker for the image’s approval allows a momentary loss of ego while concurrently reinforcing the ego, with the amount of likes becoming a source of pleasure. This cycle is repeated as a sort of classical conditioning. Thus, the collection and anticipation of likes, is not much different than the monetary gain of stock imagery or even stock photography as a collection itself. The loss of self enabled by the selfie adheres to the same function of stock photography, with people submitting themselves as items to be “bought and sold.”  

Ok, now, go take a selfie!