The Selfie, Temporality, and Contemporary Photography

This book is a theoretical examination of the relationship between the face, identity, photography, and temporality, focusing on the temporal episteme of selfie practice.

Claire Raymond investigates how the selfie’s involvement with time and self emerges from capitalist ideologies of identity and time. The book leverages theories from Katharina Pistor, Jacques Lacan, Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson, and Hans Belting to explore the ways in which the selfie imposes a dominant ideology on subjectivity by manipulating the affect of time. The selfie is understood in contrast to the self-portrait. Artists discussed include James Tylor, Shelley Niro, Ellen Carey, Graham MacIndoe, and LaToya Ruby Frazier.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in visual culture, history of photography, and critical theory. It will also appeal to scholars of philosophy and, in particular, of the intersection of aesthetic theory and theories of ontology, epistemology, and temporality.