“Seeing Ourselves Through Technology” Chapter 3

Analysis: “Rather than curation, Szucs emphasizes quantity and rhythm: a photograph every single day, no matter what” (Rettburg 34).

Rettburg is pointing out the habitual routine of humans always needing to represent themselves. When we post photos on social media, it’s always our “perfected” images, the one out of 50 that we decided is filter-worthy. Yet, we don’t see each other’s camera roll, we don’t see the trial-and-error of photos that consume our phones. Those don’t even account for the photos we don’t save from apps like Snapchat. If you’re like me, a teenager grown from the technology that surrounds us,  really think about how many photos you actually take on a daily basis. It’s not about the filtered images, it’s about the quantity of photos to get to that image. Like Rettburg also states, “Of course we not only have centuries of diaries and self- portraits, but also have ash narratives that are as short as tweets, photo- copied zines that episodically tell stories from the artist-author’s life and artists, like Tehching Hsieh, who have taken photos of themselves every hour for a year”.  In reality, we  do take this many photos, and it’s not for a project.

Commentary: “And yet her project is so akin to today’s streams of images, a little every day and the whole consists of nothing more than a potentially never-ending row of fragments”(Rettburg).

When I first read this quotes, I imagined fragments being when girls take half pictures of their faces, or cover part of their faces. Yet, social media pages are unfinished puzzles, made up by fragments of images. Every picture filters some part of the person, whether it’s a filtered selfie or a family picture. We seem to design our social media pages how we want them, always hiding some aspects of our lives. Everyone decides what they want their “puzzle” to look like, then we just build onto them. This action is even done literally on Instagram, where people post photos that don’t make a full image unless you look at the profile. I wonder if Rettburg is pursuing this idea of fragmenting, or if she has a different idea of fragmentation.

Making Connections: “Part of the fascination of watching time lapse selfies is watching how the subject changes and eventually ages”(Rettburg).

On Snapchat, I find myself being addicted to watching articles and videos on these time lapses of either people taking selfies for a year or people showing fashion styles of the past 100 years. There’s just something intriguing about watching change and transition in what really is a lifetime. Watching how just one person can look completely different with filters is fascinating. Same with watching makeup tutorials on Youtube or even doing my own makeup. Our society seems to have this desire to use filters not just because it’s the norm, but also just because it’s pleasing to experience change.