I was intrigued to read about a young chap who had what was confirmed as Britain's first Selfie Addiction. It got me thinking about the phenomenon of Selfie's, I am guilty as I presume are a lot of people of taking numerous photo's of myself and then deleting the ones I don't like (bad angle, pulling a face, bad hair day etc) Compared to my youth when any photo's were of the 'shoot and hope' variety our self image must surely be changing. I have lots of photo's of me as a child which were neither posed nor selected from a bad bunch, they were what they were and your self image either came from that or you chose to ignore it!
I wanted to do a short fun story/ poem about the pictures you never post online, the ones that you would automatically delete, as if people were to see you looking less than perfect then it would be a travesty and damaging to your view of self and the view others had of you.
I put out a facebook request asking for pictures of people looking grumpy- either badly dressed or just plain pissed off. In my last project I asked for pictures of London and was absolutely inundated with shots but this time I really struggled to get anyone to take part, in the end I was forced to use pictures of children and pose a few myself in order to get it done.
What I have taken from this is that a lot of people are not keen to see themselves look less than perfect, even if it is just a drawing!
So, come on people, chillax and stop taking yourselves so seriously! Unless you are a model by trade no one looks perfect all the time.
Oh, and many thanks to those that did send me pictures, you guys are the best!