Narcissus in Bloom: An Alternative History of the Selfie

Narcissus in Bloom is a short history of the self-portrait, beginning with Renaissance painters
like Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, through to photographers and celebrities
like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, Lee Friedlander and Hervé Guibert.

Analysing the
ways that so many artists have regarded their own image, how might the age of the selfie be
considered as a time of transformation rather than stasis? By returning to the original tale of
Narcissus, and the flower from which he takes his name, this book offers an alternative
reading of narcissism from within the midst of a moralising subgenre of books that argue our
self-obsession will be the death of us. That may be so. But what will we become after we
have taken the watery track, and rid ourselves of the cloistered self-image given to us by late
capitalism?