Schrödinger’s Selfie (2017-2018) 100 digital images
“No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors.”
― Erwin Schrödinger
“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost … not just this girl standing on the corner…?”
― Francesca Woodman
Click here to view the entire series
Schrödinger’s Selfie is a series of one hundred images, originally posted to Instagram, that are simultaneously self portraits (“selfies”) as well as obfuscations of the self. The photographs were captured with a 5” tripod, a bluetooth shutter release button, and a Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo cell phone. All editing occurred exclusively in-device with various apps.
I was influenced by Hito Steyerl’s essay, In Defense of the Poor Image, wherein he claims that the low resolution image “builds alliances as it travels.” I wanted to engage with art and artists on social media, so I began to create images to interact with historical and contemporary artworks. The series references the pictorial languages of many artists: Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Yves Klein, Jeff Koons, Paul Delvaux, Bruce Nauman, Banksy, EJ Hughes, Gustav Klimt, Piet Mondrian, and more.
Like the cat in Schrödinger’s thought experiment, I aimed to exist in two states at once: present within the frame and yet absent from it.
