Thursday, September 23, 2010
Facebook's Self Portraits
This article is so amusing to me. I love that it discussed how within the past 5 years people have made the self portrait so popular, filling hard drives and facebook pages and being updated all of the time. Although i love that more and more people are picking up their cameras and creating more art, i think that there are some downsides to this new phenomena. Because we are in control of the camera as we take pictures of ourselves, and as the article said we know our bodies and our poses and what expression we look best in, i think that we lose some of the natural beauty in these photos. If you look at numerous profile pictures of teenage girls, you will notice so many similarities. I feel like not many of these self portraits are very original or unique. The portriats show the best of pictures of these people, because after taking so many you really train yourself to take these pictures, which is why they all seem to be somewhat similar. I miss seeing natural beauty but i don't think this is only because of facbook's crazy amounts of self portraits, so i guess i can't blame it all on this! I think it is our society and it's values today. But that is a whole other topic:) Even though i don't care too much for the non-original self portraits today, i must restate that i really do like that more people are enjoying one of my favorite things, the camera:)
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I never thought of it, but people today do know how their body look best and now that i think of it most of their picture are similar. That's weird!! You also bring up a good point that it is a good thing that more people are experimenting with taking pictures. Hopefully, soon they will start experimenting with photography.
ReplyDeletei completely agree with your statement that we lose the natural beauty in these photos, with poses made to be so "flattering." I agree that they are so unoriginal, and in my opinion, they are far from actually being beautiful and flattering, due to how posed they have become. I think that some self portraits are to the point where they don't even look natural or realistic.
ReplyDeleteI miss the natural beauty as well Emily. We lose it in society cause people are too afraid of being judged, or wanting to be the best looking so they can feel more confident, or superior to feed their own unhealthy disgusting picture taking complexes.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure you miss the natural beauty though? As an artist and art teacher I am much more inspired by beauty - and this "natural beauty" that you all speak of is not nearly as beautiful as the flattering poses people can find today. In the end don't we want a beautiful photograph? Emily, I do like what you wrote about more people being exposed to picture-taking.
ReplyDeletei guess you do still want a beautiful picture, and of course, i try to find beauty in everything. I think i really just mean the pictures of the girls sticking their butts out and scrunching their hair haha. And i as well am inspired by beauty, but as bre said some of these are not so beautiful to me. I guess really by natural beauty i mean emotion and things like that.
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