Selfies of Ill Health: Online Autopathographic Photography and the Dramaturgy of the Everyday

Abstract

This article offers a preliminary investigation into what I term "selfies of ill health" and traces the expansion of the autopathographic genre in visual media from professional art photography to the vernacular selfie in recent years. In this context, the word autopathography is used to describe self-representational practices that offer a first-person perspective on experiences of illness or hospitalization. I first situate the genre by identifying several typologies of selfies of ill health, including diagnostic selfies, cautionary selfies, and treatment impact selfies. I then focus on the forms of identity performance that selfies, and selfies of ill health in particular, deploy. I argue that the performative qualities of certain selfies of ill health overlap with salient characteristics of autopathographic practice in the arts. Using Karolyn Gehrig's #HospitalGlam series as a case study, I examine how autopathographic selfies can also construct a politicized dramaturgy of the lived body, notably by enabling individuals like Gehrig to "come out" as being invisibly ill. I conclude that the dramaturgical thrust of such autopathographic imagery is to convey both the centrality of medical experiences in subjects' lives and their specific desire to be publicly identified as persons living with illness. In light of this, although selfies of ill health may have opened up new avenues for autopathographic practice thanks to the affordances of social media, their communicative intents remain consistent with those of earlier forms of autopathographic photography.

Mental health advocacy on Twitter: Positioning in Depression Awareness Week tweets

“…On the other hand, selfies depicting smiling individuals in our study are more than an expression of solidarity as they are self-portraits by individuals with mental illness, in line with the activist acts of coming-out as being invisibly ill or disabled (Tembeck, 2016). In such cases, selfies are used as visual resources for self-disclosure whereas the second person pronoun in the hashtag is used to address the confidante/s.…”

“…Whereas the tactics of coming out by feminist movements were carried out largely through public events and public cultural projects, in the recent years the visibility politics described by Whittier (2012) have been increasingly moving online. Tembeck (2016) examines how social media bloggers create and circulate selfies of ill health, using the language of activism such as online (micro-)blogging creates authenticity, a feature of autobiographical narratives that can be traced back to traditional, offline diaries. Such diaries have been studied as important sociological material for many years since the development of the pioneering approach to 'personal documents' by the Chicago School sociologists (Thomas & Znaniecki, 1958).…”

“…Similarly, photos, and selfies in particular, have been studied as the visual means through which users can continually explore the relationships between one's own personal sense of identity and agency and public self-image (Cover, 2013), as well as broader social representations. In relation to health and illness discourse, Tembeck (2016) shows how selfies constitute an important part of visual self-representational practices that offer a first-person perspective on experiences of illness in order to counter the illness' lack of visibility outside of a medical context.…”

I Am the Agenda: Personal Salience, Agenda Selfying and Individual Name Building in Hybrid Media Settings

“…The authors compel their readers to think about the pressures women feel in delivering what they perceive as acceptable body image, often finding themselves trapped by their own effort to achieve a popularly accepted self. Tembeck (2016) deals with the difficult topic of health-related selfies as individuals capture their agonizing fight with difficult diseases, sharing their struggle in a very visual way online. The author uses the term "salience" to describe autopathographic selfies which belong in the following typologies: diagnostic, cautionary, and treatment impact selfies.…”

Competing narratives in framing disability in the UK media: a comparative analysis of journalistic representations of facial disfigurement versus practices of self-representations online

“…Furthermore, digital forms of pain expression can challenge and transform the traditional models of illness narratives (Gonzalez-Polledo and Tarr 2016). A number of studies have focused on social media, self-representation and skin conditions (Karimkhani, Gamble and Dellavalle 2014;Whitsitt et al 2015;Gagnon and Duchemin 2016;Tembeck 2016). In particular, skin cancer, as one of the most common types of cancer in the world which causes severe disfigurement, has led to studies on its media coverage focused on a prevention campaign (Cokkinides et al 2009;Hay 2009).…”