This Is Not A Selfie: Photographic Self-Portraits

This exhibition looks at the primacy and variety of expression through self-portraiture from the vantage of the “age of the selfie.” While the selfie can be considered a common version of the self-portrait genre, it is often a vastly different from the self-portrait in the hands of an artist. By blurring the distinction between reality and fantasy, artifice and authenticity, and public and private imagery, the artists whose work is included in This Is Not a Selfie carefully fabricate photographs that expand the domain of self-portraiture. 

With the selfie firmly in place, it is a particularly prescient moment to revisit the enduring pursuit of the photographic self. The exhibition includes photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Alfred Stieglitz, and Andy Warhol, among others. It traces themes of self-reflection, performance, confrontation, and memory from early nineteenth-century experiments through to contemporary digital techniques.

Through the highly personal vantage point of the self- portrait, this collection traverses the visually compelling and psychologically charged terrain of the genre. This Is Not a Selfie provides an opportunity to view the remarkably innovative and diverse methods photographers use, offering new meanings into our own understanding of the self.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Lisa Anne Auerbach, Take this Knitting Machine and Shove It (2009), Inkjet print of 5 Edition: Frame: 22 1/2 × 42 3/4 × 1 in. (57.15 × 108.59 × 2.54 cm) Image: 20 × 40 in. (50.8 × 101.6 cm). The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection; Gift of Deborah Irmas

Whether or not you go, the exhibition catalog, This Is Not A Selfie, features current acquisitions of photographic self-portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection. Some of the artists included in this publication are Martin Kersels, Yves, Klein, Jennifer Moon, Warren Neidich, Catherine Opie, Amalia Pica, and Ilene Segalove. Each of the artists' practice and work are explored. Los Angeles-based collectors Audrey and Sydney Irmas, along with their daughter, Deborah-a filmmaker and photo historian-began acquiring photography in the mid-1970s, eventually specializing in self-portraiture. Their collection of over three hundred works by almost as many artists now spans the entire history of photography, from the first inventions of the 1850s to images by leading contemporary artists.

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