Home / Books / I Love My Selfie

I Love My Selfie

Book

Pages: 152

Illustrations: 73 color illustrations

Published: May 2017

Author: Ilan Stavans

Photographer: ADÁL

Contributor: ADÁL

What explains our current obsession with selfies? In I Love My Selfie noted cultural critic Ilan Stavans explores the selfie's historical and cultural roots by discussing everything from Greek mythology and Shakespeare to Andy Warhol, James Franco, and Pope Francis. He sees selfies as tools people use to disguise or present themselves as spontaneous and casual. This collaboration includes a portfolio of fifty autoportraits by the artist ADÁL; he and Stavans use them as a way to question the notion of the self and to engage with artists, celebrities, technology, identity, and politics. Provocative and engaging, I Love My Selfie will change the way readers think about this unavoidable phenomenon of twenty-first-century life.

Praise

"Seizing that rare moment when a cultural phenomenon is invading the art world, I Love My Selfie is timely, groundbreaking, and sure to influence many." - Julián Zugazagoitia, Director, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

"Rather than seeing selfies as a symptom of modern decay and pathology, Stavans encourages us to see the explosion of selfies as a kind of collective art project, in which everyone’s individualism squeezes into the frame next to everybody else’s individualism." - Noah Berlatsky, Quartz

"A book of absolute contemporary relevance, I Love My Selfie reminds us that nothing has ever been as hard as having a self, and that perhaps to better be true to it, one has to learn to conceal it, in a game of hide and seek that here gains a political dimension." - Carlos Fonseca, TLS

"Stavans’ key intuition that selfies might be understood in dialogue with self-portraiture is significant, as putting pressure on the definitions of selfies and self-portraiture—whether in the present moment or across the history of photography—can yield rich insights." - Nicole Erin Morse, boundary 2

Buy

Availability: Loading...

Price: Loading...

Request a desk or exam copy

Information

Author/Editor Bios

Back to Top
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author, editor, and translator of numerous books, including Reclaiming Travel, also published by Duke University Press.
 
Adál Maldonado is a visual, performance, installation, and video artist; playwright; cofounder of the first all-artist political party in Puerto Rico; the recipient of a Pollock-Krassner Fellowship; and the author of several books, including Out of Focus Nuyoricans.

Table Of Contents

Back to Top
1. Chillin'  1
2. The Plight of Narcissus  10
3. "Decisive Moments"  18
4. Out of Focus  28

Go F_ck Your Selfie: A Portfolio / ADÁL  39

5. Alone with Others  91
6. Rembrandt's Instamatic  98
7. Tropic Noir  113
8. And Then Comes Darkness  122

Acknowledgments  129
Index  131

Rights

Back to Top

Sales/Territorial Rights: World

Rights and licensing

Additional Information

Back to Top
Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-6349-1 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-6338-5 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-7317-9 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373179

Publicity material