Online visual imagery has given rise to a number of phenomena, not the least of which is the proliferation of the #selfie - self-portraits most often taken with a smart phone and posted prolifically across social media sites.
With a global society increasingly focused on developing a personal brand via social media forums, Jennifer Allen (in Heffernen, 2013) states that ‘narcissism appears as a necessity in our society of the spectacle’.
“Your Instagram feed – revealing, intimate, immediate – shows everyone what you think you are, and everything that you're not,” Eva Wiseman from The Guardian recently wrote.
Olympia Nelson in an article for Fairfax newspapers questioned the desire for attention, “This isn't just an interest in vanity but vainglory, being high up on a scale of 'likes''.
For this work, unguarded images have been taken directly from open sources from around the world wide web, freely available via a simple Google search, raising the question of privacy, and social needs in the expression of contemporary identity and character.
Derrik Price (in Wells, 1996) refers to the contemporary subject’s sense of the world being mediated by complex technologies “that are themselves a major constitute of our reality.”
Placed behind broken, dismantled smart phone screens, the ephemeral nature of the visual representation’s of self are set against the capricious devices that propagate their existence. In so doing, the longevity of both device verses image is questioned.
This work was inspired by initial research on how the traditional seven deadly sins may be reflected in contemporary culture, and is the beginning of a proposed series exploring vices connected to developments in online media.
Trafficking survivor, Jessica Richardson
The series ‘Internet Traffic’ aims to explore the link between a contemporary culture increasingly accepting of the common person’s ability and moral decision to access online pornography, and the connection that pornography has to the rapid increase in global trafficking of women, men, and children, for sexual exploitation.
Dolls shot using the light of a smart phone creates an unsettling aide memoire of innocence lost, while the use of broken screens from a variety of internet capable devices reminds us of the ephemeral nature of the capricious devices that propagate the existence of images that may never be erased, never forgotten. In so doing, the longevity of both device versus image is questioned and the impact on the lives impacted by the inerasable imprint.
The Urban Gypsy acknowledges the Australian Aboriginal people as the first inhabitants of the Yuggara nation and the traditional custodians of the lands where she lives, learns and works and pays respect to elders past, present and emerging.
