A self-portrait is a claim of self-authorship rather than a photograph taken by oneself

Evidence

Obviously, the dog did not produce this image on its own; it doesn’t provoke questions about nonhumans owning copyrights or about animals pushing buttons on cameras. One way of understanding selfies is that the act of taking a picture literally serves to produce the self; and to be distinct from self-portraiture, a selfie would need to be taken by the subject represented in the image. But there’s little evidence that what we call selfies are, in fact, photographs taken by the subject in the image—an argument we will develop as we go along. And unlike a selfie, a self-portrait can be anything: a self-portrait is about claiming that this represents me. This is how I see myself, mediated through a particular technical ground. It is an act of poetic invention that may involve appropriating others—images, objects, words, animals, even people—and saying, I have produced a representation that is myself. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Inverts the common definition: self-portrait is defined by the claim ‘this represents me,’ not by who pressed the shutter — key for the influencer-as-firm argument.
• XREF: connects to: Inner self-authorship is formed through conflict, dissonance, and failure — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1447