Book - An endless row of selfies is a work by artist Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski. In it, photos taken over a period of five years with Alakoski’s phone camera, are presented on paper. Many of the images were originally manifestations of Alakoski’s online presence, while some remained private and unpublished, to be equated with sketches or drafts. In Book - An endless row of selfies they are displayed in a dated but non chronological order, in relation to the text that they were originally published alongside or thought up with. Many of the images depict Alakoski herself, and are therefore self portraits or selfies. In the book, as a consequence of containing both text and images, a perspective takes shape in which the term ‘selfie’ is not seen as the once trending word that is now near forgotten or at least dull, but as a an appropriate term form a specific type of contemporary photography. Namely; a photo of someone that also took the photo, taken with a phone camera. The book furthermore contains an essay, which accounts for the phenomenology of the selfie, as well as for the circular affect, generating opportunities for reflection, self communication and new perspectives that Alakoski upholds that the selfie as a photograph has. The text grants importance to the presence of the photographer, in the moment that the photo is taken, as well as to the implicit presence of the gaze of an other, and detangles how the selfie as a photographic genre highlights performative aspects of identity rather than naturalises them.
