Narcissus in Bloom : An Alternative History of the Selfie

Narcissism is the defining pathology of the twenty-first century, but what if it is not self-obsession that defines us but a need for self-transformation? Narcissus in Bloom is a short history of the self-portrait, beginning with Renaissance painters like Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, through to photographers and celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, Lee Friedlander and Hervé Guibert. Analysing the ways that so many artists have regarded their own image, how might the age of the selfie be considered as a time of transformation rather than stasis? By returning to the original tale of Narcissus, and the flower from which he takes his name, this book offers an alternative reading of narcissism from within the midst of a moralising subgenre of books that argue our self-obsession will be the death of us. That may be so. But what will we become after we have taken the watery track, and rid ourselves of the cloistered self-image given to us by late capitalism? We are living through an epidemic of narcissism, or so we are told. Technology has made us self-obsessed, and this tendency may well be the death of us. But is our self-concern not warranted? Rather than an excess of vanity, what if we regard ourselves so frequently and with such intensity because we do not know who we are or what we are becoming? By returning to the original myth of Narcissus, and the flower from which he takes his name, this book presents an alternative reading of narcissism and the selfie, arguing against a moralising subgenre of cultural criticism that suggests our self-obsession will be our downfall. That may be so. But what if the selfie was not a symbol of stasis but an expression of a desire for transformation? And what might we become after we have rid ourselves of the cloistered self-images forced upon us by contemporary capitalism? Beginning in the Renaissance with Albrecht Drer, travelling via Rembrandt and Caravaggio to photographers and celebrities like Lee Friedlander and Herv Guibert, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, Narcissus in Bloom explores the rise of the self-portrait through cultures high and low, arguing that it is a sense of subjective indeterminacy that has disturbed us for centuries.