Last summer I visited New York City for the first time. Accompanied by family, newly energized, and armed with selfie stick, newly unboxed, we hit the Big Apple (without a care as to what that random fruit-inspired label meant, although admittedly “we hit the Large Satsuma” wouldn’t have the same ring).
We dutifully posed for one group selfie after the other as if recording the trip was the purpose of it.
Back home I was scrolling through the photos on my phone. It was when I started to delete what seemed to be dozens of the same group selfie snapped at the Top of the Rock (a deluge of takes to ensure everyone’s eyes were open and no one was gurning) that I got a bad bout of selfie fatigue.
Group selfies are meant to have something of spontaneity about them. A certain joie de vivre. But one after the other, each with half a dozen dress rehearsals to iron out the wrinkles? Not so much joie de vivre as l’ennui de la repetition.
The group selfie says Surprise! Here we all are! But the DRPD (Diminishing Returns Police Department) had already started to make some arrests as I scrolled through the catalogue on my phone…Here we all are! followed by… Here we all are! followed by…you get the selfie.
I stitched the photos together into a iPhoto slideshow, sowed on some humorous caption buttons, and laundered with some upbeat music. Curating photos always makes them more effervescent but I couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling that the parade of group selfies presented like a mundane inventory of proof that we had been to New York. Exhibit Seventeen….
I soon started to look at these selfies but not see anything. The photos that struck me as worthwhile were the natural, almost accidental, ones when the selfie stick was firmly holstered: one of my sons seated on a stool at a cafe gazing out the window, lost in thought, wearing his screensaver face.
They say sarcasm is the lowest form of humour (although “they” might be wrong, I have a soft spot for it) and I think we can safely say selfies are the lowest form of photography.
My NYC slideshow doesn’t tell a story, it writes a report. Grade? C+. Must try harder.