The internet does not adhere to the inherent, necessary asymmetry of high-versus-low-art categorizations that we use in the cultural sector: in a banal sense, all photographs on the Web are orphans ready to be claimed.
Charlotte CottonI have to admit to you, I am the person who's done probably the least analysis on the selfie, because it's a bit like pornography for me. It's this masturbatory, repetitive act that I'd rather wasn't part of my routine.
Charlotte CottonMore platform-sensitive generations will make distinctions between online and in-person intimacy, whereas fourteen-year-olds have very nuanced online selves and might embody their virtual identity in the physical, analogue version of themselves. They have a much more pluralistic understanding of the self. I don't think we'd be here now in this amazing sexual and gender revolution without the online space where young people can see and share other versions of identity and sexuality.
Charlotte CottonI think the twenty-first-century modality is exhibitionism. Exhibitionism is our contemporary strategy for maintaining our boundaries, which is to be boundary-less - to put everything out there before somebody comes and violates or penetrates something that we're keeping sacred.
Charlotte Cotton