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.