Culture of the Selfie: Self-Representation in Contemporary Visual Culture, by the Croatian art historian and media theorist Ana Peraica, was published in 2017 by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, as number 24 of its Theory on Demand series. The book is open access: the publisher distributes it freely under a Creative Commons licence, which is why we can offer it for reading below.
A visual paradox
Peraica starts from a paradox. The selfie is everywhere and often dismissed as trivial or narcissistic, yet it raises old questions about how we see ourselves. In a selfie the photographer, the subject and often the first viewer are the same person. The book treats the selfie as a genre with its own visual logic, not just a social media trend.
Histories of self-observation
The first part traces a long history: from the camera obscura and painted self-portraits to the digital selfie, and from the Renaissance self to the postmodern obsession with the self. Peraica pays close attention to the mirror. A mirror flips reality and limits the frame; convex mirrors distort it. The selfie inherits these properties, and also changes the distance between the face and the device, what she analyses as the selfie’s proxemics.
Narcissus, Echo and Perseus
Peraica then rereads ancient myths. Narcissus, who falls in love with his reflection, is the usual reference in debates on selfies, but she also gives a voice to Echo, the nymph who can only repeat the words of others, and asks what the selfie looks like from her point of view. Later chapters discuss technologies of the self, self-imaging between moodiness and madness, the medical gaze, and, through the myth of Perseus who looks at Medusa only in a mirror, the difficult question of selfies taken in places of death and memory.
Why read it
The book is one of the most thorough theoretical studies of the selfie. It connects popular practice with art history, psychology and media theory, and it is free to read. It pairs with our article on the selfie and our pages on body and self-image.
Structure of the book
The book is organised in short chapters that can be read separately: histories of self-observation; the world in front of us and the world behind our back; Narcissus and his evil twin; Echo’s point of view; and the mirror of Perseus. This structure makes it easy to use in teaching, and each chapter draws on examples from painting, early photography and contemporary social media. Peraica’s approach is neither moralising nor celebratory: she treats the selfie as a serious object for visual culture, worth the same attention as the painted self-portrait.
Read the book
Ana Peraica, Culture of the Selfie: Self-Representation in Contemporary Visual Culture, Theory on Demand #24, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2017. ISBN 978-94-92302-17-5. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, as stated by the publisher). Also available from the Institute of Network Cultures.
1 thought on “Ana Peraica, Culture of the Selfie (2017): Summary and Free PDF”