October 25, 2020

There is a snowstorm outside, wiping out the visible world in front of my window. I am sitting inside, staring at the white wall that suddenly resembles the landscape outside. When darkness falls, the white will be softly replaced by another non-colour, turning my window into a mirror that reflects the light from within. Seeing myself in the window mirrored, I can imagine what would be if the outside had turned my inside. Could I look into myself when looking at the world? The whole selfie-culture that has arisen from the use of smartphone cameras has changed the way we look at the world and on ourselves. On the one hand, the world has become a backdrop for the self. Or is it the other way round, the constantly present self becoming irrelevant for the sake of the scenery displayed around? Taking selfies seems also to be a process of reassuring the self by depicting it constantly in changing settings, as if our hybrid analog-digital identities and lives were so volatile that they need this constant reassurance and confirmation of the camera's eye, the display on screen. To take a selfie is to say, yes I do exist, I am. Thus I imagine a series of selfies without the self: would they be unselfies, or even re-emphasize the self by exhibiting the void?

To take analog selfies with a camera is yet a different process, because one has to imagine the image, the self first before taking the picture, and then wait through the process of development. Developing self. I smile silently at that idea.