Making art from selfies

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That modern brand of self-portraiture known as a selfie? Even President Obama engages in the form, as evidenced by a press photo of him snapping one yesterday at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

This happened just in time for a new exhibit that curates some excellent and unusual instances of selfles by non-heads-of-state. And you don’t even have to get dressed to see it! Welcome to the Museum of the Internet’s Not all Selfies are Art Selfies show.

One of the more unique is not a single shot, but a series: Marisa Olson’s conceptual video, comprised of screenshots as she performs what she calls a classic web-era self-portrait: A Google vanity name search.

Olson takes the concept one further, using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to search her name circa 1998…which yields nothing. A not-selfie?

All of this begs several questions, especially for those of us who don’t photograph well, no matter who is taking the picture: Are selfies art? Should we be remembered by our selfies? Is LA the selfie capital of the universe?

If you don’t feel like answering, just grab your smartphone and snap a selfie and send it to us, dear reader.