Throughout the history of art, artists resorted to self-portraiture to craft a controlled vision of themselves.  Now, couldn’t those same moods and emotions that were in the past let out through strokes of pigments, come out through filters and camera angles? Who’s to say that the selfie isn’t just a modern, scaled-down version of self-portraiture?

Although often chastised as a narcissistic procrastination tool, selfies, much like self-portraits, reveal fascinating information about our visions of ourselves. Our selfies may all be called “selfies” and carry any negative connotations associated with that word, however each selfie, like each piece of art, has individual character.

Gallery • 15 Photos

Freshman Vincent Ajegwu

Take for example the selfie by senior Anastasia Mitchell. “It’s the mood I’m in,” said Mitchell, on how she expresses herself through her selfies. “I use different colors, it always highlights the picture, makes me someone else, you know?”

In the first picture, Mitchell frames her lips at the bottom of the camera, playing with proportion. The huge block of light purple lipstick adds interest to the largely black, white, and brown color scheme. The shapes and lines and textures that art requires are present. All of this art talk sounds pretty silly next to her even goofier selfie. It’s a pretty goofy selfie, but even goofy selfies get help from artistic elements to give them their personality.

Then, take the selfie of sophomore Larry Colbert. The selfie is positioned to channel light just around the border of his head. The light makes its way through the thin cartilage of his ear, adding a pop of peachy-orange. The bright white light in the background adds contrast to the predominantly black photo. This selfie portrays something completely different from its neighbors.

Like art, selfies display varied levels of creativity and visual appeal. A crude, two-second snapshot probably doesn’t qualify artistically. However, there’s a vast number of selfies that aren’t two second snapshots. They are carefully positioned and edited reflections of personality.

“Usually, I like to do my own little looks, like sometimes I’ll be looking away from the camera,” said sophomore Brianna Molley. “I attempt to make [my selfies] different… as different as possible.”

“I guess mine are kind of different from a lot of people… because I always tilt it when I take a selfie,” said sophomore Jordan Bridges. “No one ever really does that,” she said. “I think that that captures my face better.”

The idea of an artful selfie is not new — the intellectual merit of selfies is practically drooled upon by analysts. NPR, for instance, labeled selfies as a “whole new genre of cultural expression,” in an article titled Narcissistic, Maybe. But Is There More To The Art Of The Selfie? A Tumblr account titled The Art of the Selfie describes itself as “celebrating selfies as an art form.” The piece Selfies are Art appeared in the magazine The Atlantic in 2013.

But as much as the selfie may be validated as an art form, it is also rejected as one.

“Despite the historical treatment of portraiture as a respected creative form, your selfie is probably not art,” wrote Andrea Nease in the article Beyond the Bubble: Are Selfies Art? published in Dartmouth College’s student newspaper. “Selfies, rather, have taken on a life of their own and, in the process, have blurred the public’s perception of what qualifies as art.”

Still, it is hard not to find artistic merit after examining the selfies of ERHS students, such as the ones to the left. The breadth of color schemes, levels of effort, graphic appeal, etc., is vast. If selfies weren’t art, wouldn’t they just be like our identical senior portraits?

“Art is an expression of your own voice but in a visual form,” said senior Ashley Akinwale, who went on to say that, by her definition, selfies then qualify as art.

“I really don’t see it as an art,” said senior Dashea Wyatt, “I just see it as something I do.” She did, however, recognize that whether or not it can be classified as art may depend on “who takes it,” and “what the purpose behind the picture is.”

According to Femi Alabi, selfies are art, “if you want it to be.” “You can turn your selfies into different things,” said the freshman.