ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the production, consumption and sharing of snapshots and self-portraits by a group of young Portuguese women, who have created facebook profiles in order to sell and trade their clothes. The young women who manage the facebook closet shops profiles, with their curated portrayals and photographic postings, are crafting and adapting themselves to the demands of various markets. Not only are they collaborating in the dynamics of revaluation of the products they buy and sell, they are also defying the economic crisis and developing themselves as consumers, sellers and entrepreneurs, as designers, stylists and photographers. The photographic practices could be interpreted as narcissistic, vain or frivolous the selfie phenomenon has been largely represented in this way by the mass media. The parallel markets of facebook closet shops and networked personal photographs that are generated and stimulated in that context are an act of courage and resistance in the face of the deepening of an economic crisis.