ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an autobiographical anecdote leading to discussion of a hierarchy of retail outlets and new and used commodities. The contemporary phenomenon of the ‘selfie’, as a means by which technologies might transform a relationship with the self, is historicised with reference to Vermeer’s paintings of lone women reading letters. Seventeenth-century Dutch culture and technology is referred to more widely, returning to an idea of how a history of technologies might relate to a history of the self. Further reflections on the self are followed by analyses of Daguerre’s Boulevard Du Temple. This leads to other examples of photography’s and video’s representations of a lone self, including works by artists Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Mark Wallinger, Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman, Duane Michals, and Cindy Sherman, and reference to the Video Acts exhibition. The chapter ends with reference to the self as event and with mention of further examples in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Petra Cortright, and Erica Scourti, i.e., contemporary artists whose self is historically technologised.
