From Self-Portrait to Selfie

Edited by Muriel Tinel-Temple, Laura Busetta
and Marlène Monteiro

From Self-Portrait
to Selfie

Representing the Self in the Moving Image

Peter Lang

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tinel-Temple, Muriel, 1972-editor of compilation. | Busetta, Laura, 1984- editor of compilation. | Monteiro, Marlène, 1973- editor of compilation.

Title: From Self-Portrait to Selfie: Representing the Self in the Moving Image / Muriel Tinel-Temple, Laura Busetta and Marlene Monteiro (eds).

Description: New York : Peter Lang, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018011897 | ISBN 9781788740616 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Portraits in motion pictures. | Self in motion pictures.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.P65 S45 2018 | DDC 791.43/657--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011897

Cover image: Christopher Baker, Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop
Listening and Love the Noise, 2008 © Courtesy of the artist

Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd.

ISBN 978-1-78874-061-6 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78874-062-3 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-78874-063-0 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78874-064-7 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2019

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Muriel Tinel-Temple, Laura Busetta and Marlène Monteiro have asserted
their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as Editors of this work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the
permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the editors

Muriel Tinel-Temple is currently Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London and at the University of Roehampton, having previously taught film studies at the University of Paris 3. She is the author of Le cinéaste au travail: autoportraits (Hermann, 2016).

Laura Busetta is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Film at the University of Messina. She has published articles on self-representation, Italian cinema, film and visual art. She is now publishing her monograph on the self-portrait film L'autoritratto (Mimesis, 2019).

Marlène Monteiro holds a PhD in Film Studies from Birkbeck, University of London. Her doctoral thesis, Exposed Intimacy (2015), focuses on self-representation in film and visual media. Her publications include articles on Sophie Calle, Vincent Dieutre and Mariana Otero.

As the three co-founders of the research group ‘Self-representation in Visual Culture’, the editors have participated in conferences and organised several research days and screenings, especially in collaboration with the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image.

About the book

Self-portraiture is a singular form within the broad field of first-person film and video – not so much an account of the filmmaker’s intimate life as a representation of the artist at a given instant. With deep roots in the Western tradition of painting and literature, self-portraiture in the moving image can be considered to be a hybrid practice, not fitting into the traditional definition of documentary or fiction, as it breaks the boundaries of both genres.

The investigative and self-reflexive stance of the self-portrait raises questions about intimacy, the appearance and corporeality of the subject and, more importantly, the medium itself. Today the understanding and definition of this practice is being challenged by the emergence of new forms of self-portraiture brought about by digital media, such as the selfie phenomenon. Against this backdrop, this book reassesses the significance of the self-portrait in the moving image and new media by exploring a varied and international body of works.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Muriel Tinel-Temple, Laura Busetta, and Marlène Monteiro

Introduction

Laura Rascaroli

1 Cinewriting the Self: The Letter-Film as Self-Portrait

Dominique Bluher

2 The Other Portrait: Agnès Varda’s Self-Portraiture

Marlène Monteiro

3 Vincent Dieutre: The Self-Portrait as Suspended Gesture

Muriel Tinel-Temple

4 Self-Portraits in Early Video: At Work with the Medium

Alisa Lebow

5 The Self at a Distance: Simone Fattal’s Autoportrait (1972/2012)

Deborah Toschi and Federica Villa

6 From Mass Media Studies to Self-Produced Media Studies: Strategies of Self-Portraiture in Pregnancy and Video Diaries←vii | viii→

Laura Busetta

7 The Self-Portrait in Digital Media: Repetition, Manipulation, Update

Gary Kafer

8 Believing Is Being: Selfies, Referentiality, and the Politics of Belief in Amalia Ulman’s Instagram

William Brown

9 Self-Administering the Image Virus: Six Months of Selfies

Notes on Contributors

Index←viii | ix→

Illustrations

Figure 0.1: Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath, circa 1610.

Figure 0.2: Francesca Woodman, House #4 Providence, Rhode Island 1976. © and courtesy of Betty Woodman.

Figure 0.3: Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943.

Figure 1.1: Shūji Terayama, and Shuntarō Tanikawa, Video Letters [Bideo retā], Japan, 1982–1983.

Figure 1.2: Joseph Morder, Lettre filmée de Joseph Morder à Alain Cavalier (2005).

Figure 1.3: Jonas Mekas, A Letter to José Luis #2, 2010.

Figure 2.1: Agnès Varda, Autoportrait, photomontage, 1949. © Ciné Tamaris, Agnès Varda.

Figure 2.2: Agnès Varda, Autoportrait morcelé, 2009. © Ciné Tamaris, Agnès Varda.

Figure 3.1: Vincent Dieutre, Leçons de ténèbres, 2000. © and courtesy of the artist.

Figure 3.2: Vincent Dieutre Leçons de ténèbres, 2000. © and courtesy of the artist.

Figure 3.3: Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece), 1981. © and courtesy of the artist.

Figure 4.1: David Critchley, Static Acceleration, 1976 © David Critchley; LUX London.

Figure 4.2: Joan Jonas, Left Side Right Side, 1972 © Image copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, <http://www.vdb.org>, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.←ix | x→

Figure 4.3: Marianne Heske, A Phrenological Self-Portrait, 1976 © Marianne Heske; LUX London.

Figure 5.1: Simone Fattal, Autoportrait, 1972–2012.

Figure 5.2: Simone Fattal, Autoportrait, 1972–2012.

Figure 5.3: Simone Fattal, Autoportrait, 1972–2012.

Figure 6.1: Pregnancy photographic series © March of dimes.