Ace Lehner, PhD 2020, published their first book, Self-Representation in an Expanded Field: From Self-Portraiture to Selfie, Contemporary Art in the Social Media Age in May, 2021.
Defined as a self-image made with a hand-held mobile device and shared via social media platforms, the selfie has facilitated self-imaging, becoming a ubiquitous part of globally networked contemporary life. Beyond this, selfies have facilitated a diversity of image-making practices and enabled otherwise representationally marginalized constituencies to insert self-representations into visual culture. The dynamic, interdisciplinary scholarship brought together in this book reveals that in our current moment, it is necessary and advantageous to consider the merits and interventions of selfies and self-portraiture in an expanded field of self-representation. The contributing authors take interdisciplinary global perspectives to investigate various sub-genres, aesthetic practices, and lineages in which various forms of self-imaging intervene and enrich the discourse on self-representation in the expanded field today.