We Are the Pop Art of Our Internet Times - The Cultural Significance of Facebook Photography

A classic from Quakecon 09, entitled "Glasses and Myspace are for Dorks."

    I like myspace-style, self-taken, in-front-of-the-mirror, you-can-see-the-cellphone-camera-in-the-shot photographs.

  There. I started the blog. I was trying to think of a clever way to begin, maybe pull in some social commentary. But the truth is, I don't really want to say that Facebook and celebrity culture are creating a detrimental effect on society, giving everyone a venue from which to over-indulge in gross displays of self importance. I don't want to say that, because everyone is saying it. I also don't want to say it because I am a fan of social media-style photography - the easily mock-able icon of our times.

Fefe - she's tech savy, game playing, zombie killer.. and also my successor as XFX Girl.

  Think about all the times you've heard the myspace-mirror shot scorned, or used in a snarky remark. Or used as the subject of a cartoon or parodied on Youtube. I can mention "those girls who post pictures of themselves posing in the mirror", and everyone knows exactly who those girls are. But I've got those photos. And you probably do too. The things we make fun of incessantly.. well, there's a pretty good chance that those things are our very culture.

Christa and I always said "You know you had fun if you've got the picture to prove it..." Why not prove you're having fun, right here, right now, in real time?

  I like old photos because they are a glimpse into the time. I analyzed the the old checked curtains in the background, the flannel shirt my dad is wearing in an early 80's 110 photo. I stare at the corn shucks at my great grandpa's feet. I flip through the boxes of photos at antique stores sometimes, looking at scenes of people who aren't anything to me in particular, and I look at the clothes and the poses and the objects that give the photo some sort of setting.

Even classy blogs like In Pursuit of Pretty Things do it.

The Facebook shot shows us living in "the future". It is a world where everyone carries their own little piece of technology. We can show or share something across distance instantaneously, we can have visual conversations across the space that separates us and the cultural differences that come from that space. With the death of film as the primary way to document our lives, we now have greater leeway - we do not have to ask the question "Is this special enough to keep through the rivers of time?" We can document insignificant moments - the very moments that I wonder about as I look at old photos, the moments that photographs were not then spent on.

Photoshoot styled to look like Facebook photography - Kitagawa Keiko for Cybershot S006- more at Unleash the Geek.

  I know that some people are concerned with the "reality tv" nature of internet culture - everyone wants to be famous, or just act like it on Facebook. Everyone has a podium from which to create their own image. And that is what I think is great about the current we are swimming in. There is a readily available canvas there in the digital era. There is no need to create visions which lack an audience. With the ability to easily reach viewers, there lies potential for so much more than poserism and blatant sexuality. Yes, those things are seen in the digital sludge. But if given a blank space that can be easily shaped into whatever you choose to present, why not make it beautiful? Why not choose carefully the things to document? And at the same time, why not choose haphazardly the moments to capture... because we cannot quite know in the moment the importance of the things that we think are far too casual to be art now.

PoppyD's What I Wore Today is almost nothing but this.. and its awesome.

  But I digress. When I was twelve, we took posed photographs carefully, trying to clear any disruptions in the frame, and arranging every variable to get the most of the finite 24 spaces we could use. When I was 14, the internet was a luxury which I sometimes got to take a turn at at school, choosing topics of research papers just for the purpose of being legitimately allowed to read something interesting online, and when I was invariably pulled away from it I would think "If I had the internet constantly available, how could I ever be bored?"  When I was 15, I ran with my sister and our friends to a stranger's farmhouse looking for help after a car wreck - an event which inspired my dad to get us cellphones at a time when pagers were still a status symbol.

The glimpse into Stacia's room is clean, clean, clean.

Now, I carry a tiny computer in my back pocket. I customize its capabilities with an infinite number of free programs. I have never had to think about whether or not its memory may be filling up with photos from its camera, which takes pictures that look as if they were taken by a device that is primarily a camera. But I carry three other cameras as well, 90% of the time. The blue digital point-and-shoot with a flash that can blaze through the dim of bars and clubs, the tiny hand held Vado video camera with a purple patterned finish, and the serious looking "real" video camera that is still, in this day and age, the size of your palm. I edit video easily, only ten years after I dreamed of being able to go to college to learn the unapproachable skills of turning footage into something coherent. Yes, I set out to participate in my contemporary times, and I have done it up.

Dancing in Miami.. putting the dress on the interweb.

The visible cameras in these photos give an insight into the personal, portable technology that is now common place in our lives. It is so common place, that the cameras, or more often, cellphones, in these shots are attractively colored or adorned. Objects which - even within my lifetime- would once have been thought a novelty on their own are now so normal that we individualize them to combat their normalcy. I value their appearance in the photographs from a strictly historical standpoint - we preserve pictures of things which rapidly change, which will be cast off. And then there's something philosophical about the brazenness of not even attempting to hide the fact that a photo was self taken, or by extension, that the viewer is looking at a photograph and not simply being drawn into a scene.

This actually is from a gift guide hawking the phone. But its so culturally relevant, they're even using the theme to sell shit!

 In the 1920's, there was much concern about the Charleston, the unruly girls, and the illegal booze. Its hard to argue that no one was ever harmed by alcohol or brazen sexuality. But out of the climate that undoubtedly did provide some people with a hard surface to wreck themselves upon also came the insight of Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is with that faith that I continue championing the social media style " mirrored self portrait with digital camera" and the internet uploading 3g culture it represents. Its the faith that I can both participate in and document my times and the culture around it, all the while maintaining the perspective to see outside of it.

I <3 Droid photography THIS MUCH.

 

Something New...

life and documenting it- a dilemma

As I said in one of my early blogs, I grew up always taking pictures with my siblings, esp. my oldest sister who was photography obsessed. My whole family has a different approach to taking pictures than most I think. The only person in my family who will shy away from having a picture taken is Mom, and she is almost comfortable with it too these days.
My oldest sister and i have a saying- "You know you had fun if you've got the pictures to prove it." And sometimes the best times we have are taking pictures. And long ago I scrawled a line in my little notebook and remembered it always- "..caught between life and documenting it." It seems sometimes we are more concerned with documenting the experience than experiencing it.
And why I am telling you this now will be aparent at the end of this post.



My dad picked me up at the airport when I got back from NY/NJ. A bit of backstory- I left Illinois in May, and hadn't seen him since then. He had come to Texas, to San Angelo, almost a month ago, to work with my uncle who lives there. Since San Angelo is pretty far from here, we still hadn't seen each other. He fell off of a little cliff down here and got hurt, and then couldn't leave until the doctor decided he didn't need to get the cut in his throat worked on. So then he fianally got to head towards home as I was coming back. He told my mom he didn't recognize me in the airport- I was still in photoshoot hair and makeup.
He was here for a night, and then a day, and then left the next morning. We went out to Mckinney, because the traffic in Dallas makes him discombobulated. He thinks its going to get me killed I think.

It was so cold that day we couldn't do much. We tried to walk around downtown Mckinney a bit, but whenever you came out from a place where a building blocked the wind, the wind was brutal. We went to the Mom and Popcorn Shop, and bought candy, which I probably shouldn't have had. But oh well. And then Dad said "Well, antique shops are used to people coming in and not buying anything," and so we decided to hang around the antique shops to keep warm.
We made fun of some of them for selling absolute crap, and we looked for poisonous ingredients on bottles of old food and medicine. The last one we went in we spent the most time in. it was huge, but unfortunately the top floor had such a low ceiling that dad couldn't come anywhere near standing up up there. (He's like 6'6" i think?)
They had a ton of really cool old sunglasses and some badass 70's shoes and such. We looked and looked at the sunglasses, but unfortunately all the ones with the really cool green lenses were prescription. But I did get some without green lenses.
Later we went to finish my Christmas shopping so he could bring all the gifts back with him.

The next morning I woke up and found that he was gone. I thought, "He didn't even say goodbye, that bastard." And that would have been par for the course with Dad. He seems to hate saying goodbye. He rarely even says it on the phone. I've always wondered if it goes back tohis tragic childhood, but that's another story.

I stood there slightly dumbfounded, looking for some evidence that he hadn't really left but there was none. I walked through the living room a few times, looking for something that wasn't there and it struck me sickeningly that I hadn't even taken any pictures. I woke Thom up and said, "i think my dad just up and left." "Are you fuckin' serious?" he said.

But it turned out not to be so. He'd just loaded everything in the old VW Fox and went for coffee. And when he came back, I did snap just two bad pictures in the living room, where i'm not even out of my pajamas. The real me. Not the character I play. A rarity in photos these days.
And it struck me, that it is not often that I am living so intently in the moment that I forget to document it. And I don't know what to make of that.

A Basic Timeline of Rika's Existence

The end of the eighties.. Rika’s memory starts here. She spent her childhood in the country in Effingham County Illinois- which is far far away from Chicago but only a couple hours from St. Louis. Rika has three sisters and one brother. Dad works on oil rigs, Mom stayed home for the first several years of Rika’s life. A good day for Rika during these years involves some of her cousins visiting. The TV only gets two channels, but Rika watches Ninja Turtles and Mario Brothers nearly religiously. She likes to play outside and frequently has boys’ haircuts.

Elementary school- Rika goes to Dieterich Elementary school. She is not very good at being a kid and never understands what the other kids are talking about because of her lack of watching TV and movies. She likes to read anything historical and is sort of a quiet dork.

Rika’s older sister has a 110 camera and she and Rika begin to take posed pictures of each other. Eventually they move on to 35 mm and eventually older sister emerges as the photographer and Rika becomes the model.

Rika's youngest sister participating in Oldest Sister's early photographic habit

Junior high- Still going to Dieterich, just a different hallway now. Rika does solos at chorus concerts and school variety shows. Starts to play bass guitar. Begins to discover the entertainment value of being odd. Older sister is the “hot girl” at school, Rika is generally well tolerated because of this. Rika starts dying her hair the night of 8^th grade graduation and keeps switching her hair color constantly until after college.

Rika (with wrench at left) with siblings. Photo by Carpe Diem Photography (Oldest Sister and her husband)

High school- Rika plays music with various buddies, eventually spend a significant amount of time playing heavy metal in Nine Circles with best friend/boyfriend Thom, her brother Levi, and neighbor Poe. Destroys a good percent of her voice this way.

Sews her own clothes because the nearest Hot Topic is almost an hour away in Terre Haute, Indiana. Works fast food and waitressing jobs. Gets good roles in school plays and does the announcements every morning on high school cable channel- allowing the whole school to quickly check out what she is wearing. Generally refuses to do homework and graduates 22 out of 42.

Y2K- The coming of the millennium is somewhat uneventful as Rika’s parents make her come home by midnight. Older sister salvages some of the night by insisting on bringing Rika home about a half hour late. J

Older sister becomes a serious photographer sometime during this era.

The graduation cap and the butch haircut caused by too much dying- photo by Christa Tibbs

Rika majors in Fashion Design in college. She works her ass off in school for the first time in her life and also works jobs like Denny’s and Casey’s gas station. Doesn’t have time to do much but school and work. Models occasionally for school fashion shows, ect., sometimes her own designs. Wins first place in eveningwear at Emerging Young Designer in St. Louis- gets a badass embroidery machine. Almost signs with a modeling agent in St. Louis, decides the guy is a creep. Graduates May 2008.

Models in Rika's creations for her senior thesis collection

June 2008- Moves somewhat inexplicably to Dallas TX, starts modeling seriously, and stops dying her hair.