Self-portraiture foregrounds its technical means while the selfie erases them

Evidence

What once separated a self-portrait from a selfie was that, in self-portraiture, the act of representing the self inevitably drew attention to technical means for representing the self, for producing a self. Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1529) and Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) are notable for how they situate the artist in a particular context, in a particular space, mediated by mirrors. Cornelius, Aldrin, and Adorno’s proto-“selfies” are all profoundly aware of the space of the photographer and the technologies on which they relied. In these images, we see Adorno’s mirror; Aldrin’s selfie was only produced through the technological extensions that permit space exploration; Cornelius’s photograph was the first known American photographic portrait, made with techniques developed by the photographer. The selfie, in contrast, seemed to be characterized by the differentiation of a “self” from a background, without direct awareness of this technical ground. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 67

What once separated a self-portrait from a selfie was that, in self-portraiture, the act of representing the self inevitably drew attention to technical means for representing the self, for producing a self. Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1529) and Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) are notable for how they situate the artist in a particular context, in a particular space, mediated by mirrors. Cornelius, Aldrin, and Adorno’s proto-“selfies” are all profoundly aware of the space of the photographer and the technologies on which they relied. In these images, we see Adorno’s mirror; Aldrin’s selfie was only produced through the technological extensions that permit space exploration; Cornelius’s photograph was the first known American photographic portrait, made with techniques developed by the photographer. The selfie, in contrast, seemed to be characterized by the differentiation of a “self” from a background, without direct awareness of this technical ground. The act of taking a selfie produced a “self” that would appear against a background that would disappear to the one taking a picture. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 67

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s working distinction between selfie and self-portrait, which the reading purpose will need to explain the Corpocene’s self-as-firm.
• XREF: Sets up the author’s central thesis that the influencer ‘self’ productively points at corporate personhood — infrastructure hidden in plain sight.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 67