Selfies aan zee

Whereas the cliché used to be that tourists went to exotic places and hid behind their cameras, only really seeing them once they got home and had the pictures developed, these days every trip is recorded as an instant photographic self-portrait. Jowls prominent, lips pursed, everyone’s at it – with or without a selfie stick. The museum or landscape we’re visiting becomes a backdrop to the affirmation of our own existence. Generation Selfie lives through the screen of the smartphone. A cross between an anthropologist and a street photographer, Paulien Oltheten records everyday scenes – from older gentlemen doing their morning exercises in the park to the routines of people walking their dogs. Of course, selfies also appear in her series of sharp observations – except the context she chooses emphasizes the absurdity of the phenomenon. The couple she observes is standing on the beach at night. They are lit up, time and again. The flash makes the darkness even darker, and the subjects of the portraits disappear into the night.