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Culture

Selfies get their own gallery in London

A new installation pays homage to the selfie, the latest medium in a long artistic heritage of self-portraiture.

Leslie Katz headshot
Leslie Katz
Oct. 17, 2013 4:01 p.m. PT
Leslie Katz headshot

Leslie Katz

Culture Editor

Leslie Katz leads a team that explores the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.

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The "National #Selfie Portrait Gallery" displays a rotating series of videos, 30 seconds or less, installed on two screens.
Marina Galperina/Animal New York

Chances are you've taken one or two (or a dozen) selfies in your day. And if you're like the majority of selfie-snappers, your digital self-portraits have probably involved pointing a smartphone at yourself and hoping you manage to capture both your nose and mouth in the same frame.

Then there's Alexander Porter, who took a selfie involving a digital 3D scan of his face, unfurled in pastel moving images like a pillowey landscape canvas.

He's one of 19 emerging artists whose short-form videos engaging with the "selfie" medium appear in the "National #Selfie Portrait Gallery," a curated installation that opened Thursday at the Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair in London.

Selfies like you've never seen them (pictures)

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The gallery displays a rotating series of videos, 30 seconds or less, installed on two screens. They range from poetic Internet confessionals to humorous commentaries on exhibitionism, and experimental new-media portraiture a la Porter, who named his selfie film (embedded below) "bit.ly-GL27CV."

Kyle Chayka and Marina Galperina curated the "National #Selfie Portrait Gallery" (that hashtag's theirs), which they say "explores the range of performativity, personality, authenticity, and expression inherent in the #selfie form, from the instant gratification of its creation to the popularity contests of its publication. The #selfie is as omnipresent as the smartphone and as diverse as humanity itself."

Click on the gallery above to see some super-fancy selfie-fication.

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