The singular art of the self-portrait
(World News Russia)

Russian artist Uldus Bakhtiozina, who has gained attention for her surreal, staged portraits, breaks down the magic of self-portraiture in our selfie-saturated time. It was only in 2013 that the Oxford English Dictionary named `selfie` the Word of the Year, but given the way the word has come to exemplify contemporary culture, it´s already hard to remember our pre-selfie lives. The emergence of the selfie has, perhaps unsurprisingly, coincided with a surge of interest in the related but distinct genre of self-portraiture, which art historian James Hall calls `the defining visual genre of our confessional age.` Selfies and self-portraits both serve as mirrors of sorts for image makers. It...