Making Sense of our Selfie Nation

Richard Saunders, director of the Middlebury College Museum of Art and author of “American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity.”

Today selfies are everywhere. In 2015 Snapchat reported that almost 9,000 images were posted to its site each second and of these 5% were selfies. But how has modern technology and the proliferation of the selfie changed how Americans, as well as people most everywhere, choose to retain and share with others images of themselves? Is the smartphone simply the latest device to allow us to continue to retain and share only those images of ourselves that reinforce our own idealized self-image? Sponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art in conjunction with the concurrent exhibition American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity. Sponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art in conjunction with the concurrent exhibition American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity. Free