Brief Comment

I found that the article provided great insight to the self portrait, especially since I have not been introduced to it before. I enjoyed reading about the possible parallels being made between the portrait and other factors, such as religion. The speculations made from these parallels were also sensible.

The part I found the most interesting was the part about the personalization of art and how Durer authoritarian stance to his work affected the art community today. I wish the article wrote more about that aspect.

Selfie

On the topic of self portraits developing into selfies, I find the connection strong. Historically, people would have portraits made, typically for special occassion or at a steep price. Even a few decades ago, portraits were still a special event or usually done by professionals. Now, humanity’s interest in capturing one’s self is not new, but how they do is. With the introduction of smaller and accurate cameras, people have access to self portraits more than ever. Generally speaking, the idea is the same - capturing one’s self in their work. However, I find that the reason for self portraits have broadened. Taking a selfie today is inexpensive and fast, which means that there is no particular reason to limit self portraits only for special events. In other words, the threshold for taking self portraits have been substantially lowered, and they happen all the time. The total relationship selfies have with the modern world is hard to keep track of. For example, how have selfies impacted popular media today? People are typically embarrassed to take selfies in public - why is that? Is there an innate narcissism associated with liking to take selfies?

Ultimately, I view selfies as a form of self expression and capturing of memory, since I usually take selfies during events I want to remember in the future. Others could take selfies to keep track of their body, record a great day, or even to simply look at themselves and feel good. As long as it’s not harming those around them, I find selfies to be a good thing.