Selfie Esteem Workshop

The use of beauty filters in social media and selfie editing apps is becoming increasingly common, but editing portraits is nothing new. Should we be worried then about the use of new technologies to alter images? What influence does photography have on beauty standards?Join artist and philosopher Claire Anscomb for an art workshop to explore the history of portraiture, selfies, and image alteration for beautification. Learn about this history through guided practical activities, from drawing on photographic negatives to the use of photo-editing apps, and discuss the impact of photo-editing on what we judge to be beautiful and vice versa. In doing so, gain an insight into the processes behind different kinds of photo-editing, learn how to spot subtle signs of image alteration, and consider how to balance creative freedom with potential harms relating to self-esteem, self-image, and often exclusionary beauty standards.Participants will be provided with materials to experiment and make physical and digital images. If you can, please bring a smartphone, along with your favourite editing apps.Image Credit: Claire Anscomb (image of Proconnesian marble statue of Venus courtesy of the British Museum Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. © The Trustees of the British Museum.)