Mirzoeff introduces the selfie as an accumulation of a long history of the self portrait, where this once elite pursuit has become a global visual culture, resonating with a wide audience where more people have been able to depict themselves. The selfie is described as a fusion of the self image, the self portrait of the artist as a hero, and the machine image of modern art.

An example of the imperial self is given in Velaquez’s Las Meninas, which links the aura of majesty to that of a self portrait. By depicting a mirror that reflects the King and Queen and making the image equal or superior to the King himself, Velaquez is associated with the power of the majesty, claiming it for himself. The portrait depicts the power of representation, where these images and reflections were vital in sustaining the royal power.

Later on, inventions such as photography and lithography democratized visual media and revolutionized the visible. Visual images became widespread through newspapers and magazines, and there were new ways to be visually represented. This bought the self portrait down to earth and became the picture of a hero. Mirzoeff shows the similarities between Lebrun’s Marie Antoinette and her self portrait with her daughter, where by blurring the differences between the Queen and herself, she claimed a level of equality between them. Artists also explored with new ideas such as the photographic fake, creating political and popular art that expresses social situations through self portraits that depict suicide “events”.

During the Postmodern era, art was seen as whatever an artist want it to be. Influence by the war and mental illness, the ‘self’ was no longer seen as secure. Artists made themselves their primary project and experimented with different performance of the self image such as Duchamp’s collaboration with Man Ray in creating his alter ego Rrose Selavy. Others responded towards the context of public claims towards feminist and queer identities, such as Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills which re-perform how women are represented to make a statement on their actual experiences in reality. Goldin’s photographic self portraits in the format of a dairy also serves as an example of how it’s focus was on showing the way that gender, race and sexuality were experienced or ‘performed’ in daily life. Voguing as a dance form that embraced the notion of appearing as what you see yourself was also on the rise, these along with the concept of the ‘read’ and the ‘shade’ saw a transformation of attitudes toward gender and sexuality.

Lastly, Mirzoeff concludes the chapter by emphasizing that these categories of identity – gender, race, sex and class are being transformed and remade today. Therefore, the selfie can be seen as a performance by an individual that hopes for it to be seen by others; it is about social groups and conversations, inviting others to join in a visual conversation by liking or disliking what you have made. It can be seen as a performance or as a digital conversation, with network cultures focusing more on the visual instead of speech.

In the introduction of How to See the World by Nicholas Mirzoeff, the author starts out by introducing us to Blue Marble, an image of the earth. Thought to be the most produced photograph ever, the image shows the earth as a unified, single entity, mixing the known and the new in a beautiful comprehensive visual format that inspired many people. This image is then contrasted with NASA’s 2012 version of Blue Marble, which is digitally assembled from a series of satellite produced images; and astronaut Hoshide’s selfie taken from the international space station, which focuses on the individual rather than the planet. Both of these shows that the way in which we view the “world” has changed. Through these examples, Mirzoeff argues that ‘there is more to seeing than being in the place to see’, and that we assemble a world view from different pieces until we can recognize it as “reality”.

The world has also changed in terms of becoming more urban centered, with a younger population and a higher connectivity with the widespread use of the Internet. The planet itself is also changing physically due to global warming. Mirzoeff states that the emerging global society is visual, and that there is such an increase in visual material that it is often hard to make sense of what we are seeing. Mirzoeff argues that the visual culture can be seen as the relation between the visible and the invisible, manifested today as a “network society”, in which a new world view is produced by making, watching and circulating images while mapping a connection between them. More things are changing at a faster pace and on a global scale.

Mirzoeff also states that we are in a time of change, and that there have been similar periods of dramatic change before, such as the development of maps and microscopes in the 17th century and the invention of photography and film in the 19th century. The Internet has bought about an extraordinary pace of change where anyone with a connection can make, see and share moving images, and disseminate their writing. It has also provided a way to see the world enabled by machines, where images are rendered results of computation and people accepts that photographs can be altered so long as it is not absurd. The Internet can be seen as a collective medium where people want others to engage in what they have posted online, creating something in common.

Finally, Mirzoeff acknowledges that the “image” gives a visible form to time and change. He introduces Darguerre’s photograph of fossils as a response to the discovery that Earth was older than the biblical account, Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway as a way to visualize the changes of time zones and Kilburn’s photograph of a changing political scene as transformations of visual media in the past. Today, we are still using time based media as an attempt to try and capture change. This book will help us organize and understand these changes to our visual world.