Chris Aldrich is reading “Self-Portraiture as Self-Care”

Read Self-Portraiture as Self-Care by Ellie Mackin (elliemackin.net)

I’ve recently started taking self-portraits as a method of self-care. It’s a way to keep hold of my corporeality – although that sounds very dramatic, it’s an important thing to do for a person who spends most of their time living in their own head. A lot has been written about selfie culture: see the tag Selfie Culture on HuffPo, and (particularly) Laura Bates's (of Everyday Sexism) Guardian article about selfie-taking as (teenage) feminism and image reclamation. I don’t agree that selfies and self-portraits are different things – they are both about holding onto one’s own image and cementing it in a place and time. Sometimes that place and time is frivolous, sometimes it’s serious. Both are okay and both should be encouraged.