In 2014 it was the beginning. Only 15… In 2015 it went better: 50. In 2016 it became clear that there is a steady upward trend: 97. In 2017 there was something like a plateau: only 47, although another 48 did what they could. These numbers are of deaths from accidents during attempts at “self-photography”. A new cause of death was added to the already known ones: selfie. Death from narcissism.
The inventors of photography and the photographic process, back in the 19th century, surely could not have imagined it. That someday photography would come to kill. There is, of course, a word that suggests something related: immortalize. But immortality had the opposite meaning: to preserve the image of a person (or a thing) when it would no longer exist. The fact that for the image to exist, it is very likely that the “subject” of it (here the living subject) will cease to exist, for the image to become not just a “depiction” but a cause of death—this is a radical reversal. Which is already happening.
the first democratization of the pose
Photography is a technical process that has gone through various stages of evolution (and refinement) since the first decades of the 19th century. However, it is simultaneously a process of social (even political…) transformation, almost from its very first steps. Primarily because it was relatively quickly understood that it could replace, on behalf of the bourgeois class (in the early decades of its political triumph), oil painting, a painting technique that was mainly accessible to aristocrats. Whether it concerned “portraits” or the representation of objects.
The photographer Gisele Freund 1 describes the social birth of photography, through the mass production of “daguerreotypes”:
… Daguerre, a man of the square, capable and ambitious, had sought to make his name known through the publicity his invention received—and he succeeded. In the circles of high society, in the salons, his discovery became the dominant topic of conversation. It was certainly not coincidental that towards the end of the 1830s, when applied sciences were beginning to develop rapidly, scientists became interested in photography. Barely fifteen years had passed since its birth, and this invention was becoming known to the general public.
“Everything that contributes to the progress of civilization, to the physical and moral well-being of the individual, should be the constant object of care of an enlightened government, for the benefit of those who have entrusted their destinies to it. That is why all those who with their successful efforts have helped in this noble purpose, should receive honorary reward for their success.”
Nothing better characterizes the moral orientations of the Liberals and their adherence to the idea of progress than these words spoken by the wise Guy Lussac 2 when he presented to the Chamber of Peers 3, during the session of July 30, 1839, the same bill that Arago 4 had presented a few weeks earlier to the Chamber of Deputies. The bill offered the inventor of daguerreotype an annual lifetime income of six thousand francs. The proposal was unanimously accepted by all Bodies. Thus, the French state acquired the invention, which was presented to the public during a session at the Academy of Sciences on August 19, 1839.
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The intellectual elite of Paris, composed of scientists and artists, the most famous of the era, was present en masse at the Academy of Sciences. “From 11 o’clock in the morning, the arrival of the crowd was dense. At 3 o’clock, a real mob blocked the doors of the Institution… All of Paris was crowded into the seats reserved for the public,” reported the official publication of the Academy. The presence of foreign scientists demonstrated the great interest the invention had aroused in such a short time, even beyond French borders.Arago himself explained in detail the technical method. He emphasized to the audience who was following him carefully what exceptional services photography would offer to the sciences. “How much archaeology will be enriched by the new method! To copy the thousands of hieroglyphs that cover, many times externally, the great monuments of Thebes, Memphis, Karnak, etc., would require entire decades and armies of draftsmen. With daguerreotypy, a single person could carry out this enormous task.”
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The panorama of the multiple applications of photography that Arago outlined in his speech gave the opportunity to appreciate the full extent of the invention. Arago’s magnanimity became evident when, with a completely prophetic gaze, he declared: “Moreover, when observers use a new instrument in their studies of nature, what they hope for is always much less than the discoveries that are ultimately achieved by using that instrument. In this case, one must count on the unexpected.”In the weeks that followed, Paris, according to the newspapers of the time, presented an unprecedented spectacle, a city seized by the mania of “experimenting” with daguerreotypy. Loaded with devices weighing almost a hundred kilos, tools and accessories, the Parisians ran off in search of subjects. The setting sun distressed them because it deprived them of the raw material for their experiments. But as soon as the next day dawned, with the first light of the sun, one could see many experimenters trying, with full precautions, to transfer onto the already prepared plate the image of the neighboring rooftop or the perspective of a crowd of chimneys. In a few days, in the squares of Paris one encountered a multitude of machines aiming at monuments. The physicists, the scientists of the capital, applied the inventor’s instructions with perfect success. The optical stores, where the first photographic devices were then sold, were constantly full. Daguerreotypy was the inexhaustible topic of discussion in the salons. Paris acquired a new sense.
As soon as photography became more publicly known, various inventors proclaimed the value of the invention. In France, a public official named Bayard, and in England, the scientist Talbot, both found a method of photographing on paper, the first using iodide silver, the second using chloride. This is proof that photography responded to the needs of the era.
The new invention had aroused the interest and attention of all social classes. However, the technical imperfection and the extremely high costs it initially required, for the time being, made it accessible only to wealthy citizens.
…The improvements began with the optical aspect. At the end of 1839, Baron Seguier built a machine that was one-third the size and weight of Daguerre’s. These machines, which weighed no more than fourteen kilograms, were at least portable. The opticians Chevalier, Soleil, Lerebours, Biron, and Monmirel later, around 1840, built new devices at much reduced prices. In 1841 they cost 250 to 300 francs. Plates that a year earlier had cost 3 to 4 francs were now sold for 1 to 1.5 francs.
In 1846, annual sales in Paris reached about 2,000 machines and 500,000 plates. The number of interested parties was still limited due to the prices. Finally, the lens made by the optician Voigtländer competed so much with the French machines that the French, under pressure from this competition, were forced to lower their prices according to the German system. A catalog from the optician Lerebours in 1842 lists the price of this machine at 200 francs.Advances in technology also reduced the time required for the pose. In 1839, when the invention of photography was announced, the necessary exposure time of the plate to the bright sunlight was fifteen minutes. A year later, thirteen minutes in the shade was sufficient. In 1841, this time had already been reduced to two or three minutes, and by 1842, only twenty to forty seconds were needed. One or two years later, the duration of the pose no longer posed an obstacle to taking photographic portraits.
In all European countries daguerreotypy had great success, but mainly in America it created a huge sensation and gave a boost to a flourishing trade.
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It has been calculated that by 1850 there were already 2,000 daguerreotypes taken in America in a single year. The total production between 1840 and 1860 was over thirty million photographs. Prices ranged between 2.5 and 5 dollars. In 1850 alone, for portraits, which constituted 95% of photographic production, it is believed that Americans spent around 8 to 12 million dollars.
In this newly formed American society, this new method of self-representation perfectly matched the needs of the pioneers who were proud of their success and wanted to show it.
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The great success, the popularity of the invention of photography, and the engine of many of its technical developments, was ultimately not its scientific exploitation, as its first supporters had imagined; although much was accomplished there too. The “popular element” of photography was self-immortalization. The individual or family portrait. The pose.
What before the development of photography and its machines was a privilege only of the aristocracy or/and the very wealthy citizens, namely funding a skilled painter to create an oil portrait that would adorn the grand salons, with photography gradually but steadily became accessible to almost everyone.
Of course, initially a professional was needed. The photographer. But generally the cost of photographic self-representation dropped significantly. Ultimately, it was not a continuous and daily process: self-representation retained (even when the professional photographer was removed and replaced by a friend, or an unknown passerby; or by the “automation” of the photographic camera) a character of extraordinariness.
the first democratization of the idol
Archaeologists find objects that they date back to mirrors as early as 6,000 years BC in Mesopotamia. But whether they were well-polished, “shiny” stones or, later, well-polished “shiny” metals (mainly copper, bronze, in the more expensive cases gold), one should not understand the sight of the image (of the self) as we know it. For millennia such “mirrors” made hazy, unclear, distorted images. The only case of clear reflection was on the surface of still water.
Neither, however, was the relationship with the image of the Self what we know today. In the scent of life: idols and mirrors (Sarajevo no 104, March 2016) we wrote:
If you look in a mirror, are you sure that you see yourself? Yes, or rather yes. However, it hasn’t always been like this – and in quite a few cases, it still isn’t. The idea that “we have learned (in some way) to consider that by looking in the mirror we see ourselves,” the idea therefore that this gesture which some people make a few or very few times a day and others many times, considering it both men and women as a natural gesture, is in reality a convention that would be considered, perhaps annoying. And yet. Our relationship with our image is not “natural.” It is conventional. It doesn’t hold everywhere, it didn’t always hold.
Across various cultures, there are myths related to mirrors, each speaking in its own way about this “abnormal” relationship. One such myth is the ancient Chinese myth of mirror phantoms. According to this myth, anything one could see in a mirror was not a reflection of the world. They were other, separate beings, with different forms, colors, properties – it should be noted that the “mirrors” of the time were polished metal surfaces or still water surfaces.
It was another world. Once (this myth says) the mirror phantoms could pass through mirrors and come into the human world, and vice versa. There was a harmonious relationship between these two worlds. But later, some of the mirror phantoms became aggressive and began causing problems in the human world. This caused great unrest for a long time. Until the wise emperor Huang Di found a magic formula/incantation that trapped all the mirror phantoms. Trapped thus, the wise emperor forced them to return through the mirrors, and to remain there without being able to pass into the human world. “But this curse is not eternal,” said Huang Di. “It will last 10,000 years. After that, the mirror phantoms will be freed, they will pass through the mirrors again, and they will cause great evil in the human world.”
The interesting thing about the Chinese myth is that it is recorded in ancient papyri and, furthermore, places the imprisonment of the mirror phantoms in the year that (in the Christian calendar) is 2697 BC. A simple subtraction shows that the escape of the mirror phantoms is still far away…The belief that inside the mirror one sees not a reflection but something different was not exclusively Chinese. Partly, it may have been due to the fact that mirrors (until a few centuries ago) did not have the clarity of a glass reflector; they showed something, but “distorted.” However, various cultures also placed particular emphasis and meaning on real “peculiarities” of what we call reflection. Such as, for example, the reversal of “right/left.” Because this is fundamental, even in the clearest mirror one does not see one’s face as others see it. Faces do not have absolute symmetry; consequently, our faces as we see them in the mirror are different from our faces as seen by anyone else (or captured in photographs).
It is not at all obvious, moreover, that any individual of our species would recognize themselves in a mirror! The primary, animal sense we have of ourselves at any moment is so subjective (and so abundant) that the image (of ourselves) rarely “shows” this sense. Babies of our species usually manage to self-recognize (and accept this reflection as a momentary image) in front of the mirror only after completing two years of life, and only after having been “taught” repeatedly what it is they see there. Studies conducted on children in other parts of the world, where mirrors are not used (if not for other reasons, certainly due to poverty), in Africa for example, have shown that even 6-year-old children had no such relationship with their image. They had, rather, the opposite reaction: they froze at the sight of their image, and quickly ran away.Elsewhere, among the Etruscans and the (ancient) Egyptians, if a mirror showed something, it was not the image of someone’s face but their soul. Beyond this, there was (and still is) a belief that a dead person’s soul could observe or even intervene in the world through a mirror. Thus, there are customs that after someone’s death, the mirrors in their house are covered with cloth for several days. Or that one might see in the mirror not their own face but a distorted version that has “become autonomous” and makes grimaces, due to some psychological tension—an idea that has been used in cinematic thrillers. Also, that someone might see in the mirror a dead person—about—to appear or a murderer—about—to approach.
The hand mirror was an accessory of elite women’s coquetry, but it did not have the use we imagine. The makeup, dressing, and adorning of aristocratic women was not done by themselves but by their servants. These would first look and judge the painted face – in the mirror, the Lady could only see herself dimly. As for dressing and adorning, she could inspect this with her eyes, without “looking in the mirror.”
Obviously, the gleam of a bronze surface impressed, but it was neither the mirror nor its use as we know it. Elements of glass-making technique (and some kind of metal coating) were known at least by 500 B.C. in China, and later in Rome, but were not particularly utilized. Tin-coated glass surfaces began to appear and be used in the 17th century. Small hand mirrors became the favorite fetish of aristocratic ladies; moreover, their reflections were so impressive that large mirrors became a key element of interior decoration in various palaces and assembly and social halls of the “high society.” Eventually, for broader domestic social use, mirrors began to enter from the urban class in the 19th century; meanwhile, their quality had improved, with silvering of one side.Someone characterized the massification of mirror-use as the democratization of narcissism. Household mirrors indeed changed the – way – we – conceive – of – ourselves, strategically emphasizing not only “appearing” but also the systematic, subsequently ongoing (to the grave) care of this “appearing.” Of course, other techniques of self-representation and image projection evolved accordingly, from the 19th century onward, so that today the mirror is something more than a grooming accessory. It is, rather, the general type of narcissism.
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Although since the Middle Ages, especially in Venice with its highly skilled glass artisans, progress had been made in creating glass mirrors, the coating of one side with a layer of silver (or a silver alloy), that is, the construction of mirrors as we more or less know them, is a product of the early 19th century. Coinciding roughly with the invention of daguerreotype photography. The German chemist Justus von Liebig, credited with various titles in the history of science (such as the founder of organic chemistry), is referred to as the first to silver a glass surface in 1835, making it the reflective side of the mirror. Shortly thereafter, the industrial production of mirrors (at a cost affordable to a broad consumer base) began to make reflection and images part of everyday life. Although various superstitions and old beliefs about mirrors did not disappear immediately, the royal question “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all” lost the dramatic vanity it had in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale (of 1812) and became, from the last decades of the 19th century and even more so in the 20th, a quiet everyday commonplace. Not only in household items, but in decoration, commerce, architecture, advertising…
the union of the lens with the mirror
Until very recently, when the microscopic photographic lens was placed on the front of smartphones connected (easily) to their screens, the two narcissistic techniques, photography (or selfie) and looking in the mirror, had remained parallel, with an “internal dialogue” – but separate.
Their union was about to elevate narcissism not to the square but to the cube! Because it now became possible for everyone to simultaneously monitor and “immortalize” in real time every movement, every expression, every grimace of his/her face or his/her company.
A cliché perhaps, but not understandable. For the first time in the history of our species, and for the first time in the techniques of “capturing / highlighting the Self”, it became feasible for everyone to simultaneously become director and protagonist of his/her own “representation” (even if done with static shots…) for display to others. In front of the plain mirror, everyone could construct him/herself to be displayed later. In front of the plain photographic lens, one could not oversee, in real time, the “quality” of his/her pose. Only with the celebration of the selfie (: a variation of the derogatory selfish) did the self-satisfaction of the pose and that of the public (electronically mediated) display to others merge into “one process.”
Initially, it is a technological achievement, albeit of little significance compared to everything else that is formatted on the handheld computer called a smartphone. And then it is an “ontological” (social) transformation. It is like the mythical Narcissus, who is enchanted by his reflection on the water’s surface, learning that this reflection will be transferred elsewhere thanks to the water flow, and subsequently his immediately following and immediately subsequent reflections, so that everywhere and always anyone can see the same form: that of Narcissus.
This playful immortality/broadcasting establishes a strange sense of “power.” Virtual, like many others, yet still “power”: the power to produce and distribute multiple copies of your own image whenever you choose. A narcissistic self-satisfaction that can flood the images of your “contacts” and, in view of this possibility, returns to flood the Self: to live by posing; to live through the artificial reproduction of Your images.
It is at this point that the social production of the “extremism” of exceptional self-photography began to accelerate rapidly. It is not exceptional because of some aesthetic peculiarity; but because it displays danger, at the blurred boundary between being “real” or staged. By starring, yet simultaneously directing one’s own self towards immortality, anyone easily loses the boundaries between the physical here (of photography) and the digital everywhere (of virtual display); between the present (physical) space/time and the future (digital) circulation of the image. The latter is safe, almost routine; the former is expected to be momentarily dangerous. Like a cliffhanger.
How momentary can it be to step on the edge of a cliff? The time of capturing the pose is a fraction of a second; the time the body balances while posing is considerably longer… The reflection on the screen absorbs all attention; the chasm behind and below is (should be) merely a provocative (to the viewers’ eyes) décor. But it isn’t like that.
Behold, the union of the lens with the mirror has come to kill, and indeed repeatedly, at various lengths and breadths of the capitalist planet. Is it a technical invention (thus: the machine) that imposes a change in the conception not only of the Self but also of the materiality of the world surrounding it? Or was the union of the lens with the mirror a “ripe social demand” before its satisfaction was undertaken by certain technicians; and as such (as a ripe demand) did it impose the invention of selfies?
It is difficult to impossible to support the second, although the individual and collective megalonarcissism of the societies of late (neoliberal) capitalism shaped and “gave birth to” various techniques of satisfaction, from the ’80s onwards. Nor, however, is it possible for a mechanical application alone (as a possibility) to cause such widespread and such rapid “new social behaviors.”
The relationship is rather dialectical. The social, moral and ideological prerequisites of Self-photography existed in abundance before the union of lens and mirror; they were and still are open, receptive, to any proposal of technical mediation / reduction, without being able to anticipate and pre-shape massively the preferred forms or/and “services”. On their part, the technicians of capitalist gadgets certainly live within the same prerequisites; consequently they can imagine, now more boldly and now more prosaically, mechanical applications that “fit”. They will be appreciated, they will sell. In a society that would insist on considering simple photographic prints on paper “demonic” (or, simply, completely indifferent) even if the possibility of the selfie machine existed, either it would be exiled along with its inventor or he would live as a eccentric, a fantasy-struck marginal.
That is why, while it is wrong to demonize the machine, it is equally wrong to dismiss it. In the capitalist world, the machine is always installed not merely as a “tool,” but as a condenser of existing social relations, beliefs, and “morals”; and immediately thereafter as their amplifier; as their reproducer and disseminator. The invention and “socialization” of the machine is clearly oriented toward relations amenable to mechanical mediation. Other relations that are not or are not deemed as such become surplus. They are not mechanized, with the prospect of being silently overcome.
It is not inherently neutral, as some views claim. It is causally oriented toward the profitable alienation of one or another existing area of the social. Of course, in some cases, its genealogical legitimation, its constructive orientation, can be neutralized, even reversed, within a different network of relations. In some cases, under certain conditions. Not everywhere, not always.
capital, commodity, risk, all with one click: a version of capitalist nihilism
The “Myself is Capital,” a continuous dynamic self-investment destined to “yield” (financially, symbolically, sexually…). The “Myself is Commodity,” destined to be displayed, to compete and win, to fetch “high prices” in the field of social relations. Is there anyone who disagrees that these are the successful (so far) imperatives of the neoliberal phase of capitalism, the moral, aesthetic, psychological, and social “invisible” directives and encouragements of daily “normality”?
Both the mirror and the photographic lens have been, in their different and distinct historical trajectories as machines (in the expanded sense of technical mediation…), for two centuries, processes of objectification. Thing-making. The image both in the mirror and in the photographic imprint is Me – but only as an image. It is Me – Thing. The difference between these two processes of objectification was that only in the mirror image could I be the technician, the “master” of my thing/image. In contrast, in photography there always intervened another eye, another hand in the construction of my thing/image: the photographer, who took care of the lighting, the contents of the frame (or décor), the angle of the face, the height of the gaze, the posture of the body… he was the technician, the “master” of representation. And, of course, he took care of the process’s safety: a matter of division of labor: no photographer would want his clients to be killed!
The selfie, as the technical unification of mirror and lens, restores the unity of “the Self as Capital and Commodity.” The side of “capital” is the dynamic aspect of self-staging: now I am myself, at my own will, the “maker” of my pose; my director; that which I could already do in the mirror—but now in physical space. The side of “commodity” remains that of imprinting, of “recording,” but now decisively enhanced by the unlimited (digital) free circulation of my image. Now I can regularly (and endlessly) “advertise” myself…
It is consequently expected that the Self-as-Capital (director of the pose) and the Self-as-Commodity (image), through the selfie, reproduce the already embedded “language” of capitalist accumulation and circulation. Within this accumulation/circulation, the possibility of inflation always lurks. More specifically, the inflation of images, and even more precisely, the inflation of images of (inflated) Selves. What “value” (of viewing, of “likes”…) can a “typical” self-portrait have? How can its “value” be increased?
Faced with this relentless question (the relentless proliferation of images – of Egos, of commodities), risk-taking (which is simultaneously an expression of cerebral “dynamism” as well as commercial “superiority,” “resilience,” or “pursuit”) is organic: it is the inverted expression of capitalist nihilism. The selfie at the edge of a cliff (or in other similar “liminal poses”) is the embodied, private, individual expression of creative destruction: I push my Ego to the brink of physical destruction in order to create the “marvelous” idol of my “determination.” In other words: I tend to destroy myself as a Commodity in order to prove my dynamism as Capital! How tragic: if I happen to accidentally destroy myself, no dynamism is recognized—instead, I simply become (apart from grief) a news item! Lasting only as long as the photographic click… And if I exist as a “thing,” it is now only on the autopsy table…
The dominant capitalist ideologies, those that “praise vitality,” are nothing but banners of unlimited competition of each against all others; they are watered with the necrophilia of the “fixed” and the exploitation of life. But advertising commercial campaigns are equally necrophilic, since the monotonous core of why you should “buy” this or that is that if you don’t (or, at least, if you don’t desire it) you will fall into social decay; you will lose your “value.”
Therefore, we must render “to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” to the historical phase in which they coincide. If one sees these modern machines of self-deification simultaneously as technical capitalist inventions and as condensers/multipliers of specific social relations and ideas within contemporary societies, then one can rejoice: even a photographic permit, capitalism kills you, you fool!!!
And for this, you don’t even need natural cliffs!..
Ziggy Stardust
cyborg #12 – 6/2018
- Photography and Society, ed. Theory, 1982. ↩︎
- Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778 – 1850) was a French chemist and physicist. Together with Alexander von Humboldt, he discovered that the water molecule consists of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. He also formulated the two basic laws for the behavior of gases, while he extensively studied mixtures of brandy and alcohol, developing the scale of alcohol percentage in beverages that is still used today. ↩︎
- A kind of “Upper House” that operated in France from 1815 to 1848. Gay-Lussac was (by family “tradition”) a supporter of the “old regime” after the French Revolution. ↩︎
- Domilique Francois Jean Arago (1786 – 1853) was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer. Of steadfast liberal beliefs, he supported the carbonari in Italy and various anti-monarchic revolutions in Europe and North Africa. He held governmental posts for brief periods in 1848. ↩︎