I put together a couple works for the
"Those who can, teach" Champaign Unit 4 Art Teachers exhibition at
Indigo artist coop. May 10-18, 2012, 9 East University, Champaign. The image below is one of the works I exhibited, a composited collection of my Facebook mini-collages (
Selfies) that I created over the past 3 years. My other image was
a collection of snapshots I took during my year of part-time teaching (2012-2013) at Centennial High School.
What are Selfies?
Selfies are self-portraits taken with inexpensive digital or cellphone cameras (sometimes
taken with mirrors, other times not) and posted on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Self-portraits are nothing new in the art world. What's new is the fact that the age of digital and social media facilitates a virtually infinite number of self-portraits to be created and shared with viewers online, and that the creators of these self-portraits are not traditional
art-world or
academy-trained artists, which is to also say that
their self portraits have little economic value. My recent hashtag search in Instagram for the #selfie hashtag and its variants produced around 35 million photos, and a search for the #me hashtag in Instagram produced over
44 million photos. These are astonishing numbers by anyone's count.
Selfies are characterized by bloggers and social media commentators as
annoying,
narcissistic,
insufferable, and
ridiculous bordering on offensive. Selfies are also recognized as a
resistant,
transgressive, an
empowering form of
self exploration and personal creative expression, and
a visual diary marking our existence in the world. There are apparently even
rules for doing selfies. Although I doubt if very many of those folks who have posted over 35 million selfies to Instagram are paying attention to anyone's rules, some interesting trends suggest an the emergence of an online-world aesthetic when it comes to
portraits,
females' and
males' selfies. Setting all these debates aside, what remains clear is that selfies are an unashamed way of saying it's #me,
I'm here, please look and
like!
My creative process for making selfie-collages
For my original self-portrait image I used my laptop camera, sat at my dining room table, positioned the laptop lens, and took a pic of myself. I shared my self-portrait in color and in black and white with various folks at the
NAEA who needed an image of me. With the original in hand, I started making these selfie-collages in 2009, which was about the same time I joined Facebook. My original profile pic on Facebook was a snapshot of a Christmas ornament that I modified in Photoshop. I just didn't feel comfortable in 2009 sharing a pic of me on the Internet.
(LOL, I soon got over that feeling.)
Each mini-collage selfie took anywhere from 2 - 3 hours to create and refine. The process (described below) was exacting, but lots of fun.
- In addition to the original self portrait image (mentioned above) I took pictures of subject matter that I wanted for the collage (computers, cornfields, airplanes), initially using my inexpensive digital camera, and later using my cell phone camera.
- I also searched online for other images of subject matter I needed (soccer ball, TV set, pic of the state of Florida, etc.)
- Using image editing software (Photoshop in my case) I isolated (cut and saved as a separate image file) the part of the image I wanted to use.
- I then modified each image to be collaged. I got rid of unwanted background content; cleaned up the edges of the remaining image; and played with size, positioning, saturation, color, contrast, sharpness, levels, etc.
- I then pasted each modified image onto the self-portrait image (using Photoshop's layers tool).
- I further adjusted each of the layered images to create my desired effect.
- Once I had something I liked, I saved that file to my computer as a .psd image file (layers intact).
- I then flattened and saved the digital collage, paying attention to format (jpg, png, tiff), resolution (DPI), and dimensions (height/width) settings. I gave each version of the image its own file name.
- I usually made two or three variations of the collaged final image. Each version had its own file name.
- Because these were for Facebook, I kept the dimensions and resolution low, but now I keep larger versions of each collaged image as well.
A couple more tips
In 2011 I abandoned the use of a digital camera and Photoshop to create these selfie-collages. I now take pics with my cellphone and use
Preview (an app on my Mac) and
Pixlr (a free online photo editor) to create these collages. The process is the same as when I used Photoshop. I archived most of my Facebook mini-collages to
a Flickr set. These are all small format images. I wish now that I had created them larger (dimensions and resolution), saved the larger files, and then reduced their dimensions for Facebook.
For the art exhibition, my interpretive wall text for this image talked about
Facebook,
DIY-culture,
apps, and the popularity of "
selfies" in social media sites.
Regarding the
"Those who can, teach" show... (a smart title for this exhibition of Unit 4 art teachers put together by local high school art teacher, Stacey Gross) all I can say about recognizing the artistry, creativity, and excellence of our teachers (all of them, not just art teachers) is that if we want good folks to choose this profession, we better start supporting them, and on that standard, I give America
a big fat "F".
