Purikura digital photo sticker booths used to be a very popular photographic culture among Japanese youth, especially female youth. Today, the boom is declining because of SNS culture – especially the selfie practices on Instagram. In this presentation, I place purikura as the forerunner of SNS selfies. Comparing these two self-portrait systems, I will discuss the the position of selfie in the contemporary Japanese popular culture by analyzing the selfie taking procedure, manipulation process and the resulting images.

Morihiro Satow, Ph.D. (*1966) is Professor of Art Theory and Visual Culture at the Faculty of Letters at Doshisha University, Kyoto, and Professor Emeritus at Kyoto Seika University.

Authors website:

http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/b-monkey/intro-e.html

keywords:

#gaze, #videoconferencingsystem, #videophone, #mirror, #selfie, #scifi, #visualculture

From Purikura to SNS Selfies. Digital Photography and Japanese Popular Culture | by Morihiro Satow