The paintings in Sami Lukkarinen’s “Hot or Not?” series are based on self-portraits uploaded to Finnish websites. The original pictures are personal representations voluntarily submitted by the subjects. The images have been sourced from two of Finland’s most popular photo gallery websites: the IRC Gallery and City magazine’s Peilikuva (Mirror Image). The former was created to put a face to online chatters; the latter is a fairly simple review site that allows visitors to evaluate the pictures submitted by other users.

At the beginning of 2005, the IRC Gallery had over 140,000 users and a database of just under 1.2 million images. Peilikuva boasted 6,900 images available for review. The total came to 107,000, however, when all images included in the City magazine website’s photo galleries were included, also those not available for criticism. IRC Gallery users tend to be fairly young, as highlighted by the users’ average age of under 20. Among 16–17-year-olds, one in five young people has already uploaded one or more image to the IRC Gallery. What does this bode for the future, if young people are thought to lead the way?

It is obvious that our culture’s increasing emphasis on visual imagery puts the aesthetic characteristics of phenomena and matters at the core of their wider significance. Sensual perception becomes an integral element of the experience. In a parallel development, advances in technology have detached online communication from its purely textual roots in a fast-forward plunge towards multimedia, interaction through images, sound and movement. The online presence of individuals is rapidly being given visibility, and various websites designed to present, distribute and review users’ personal images and experiences have consequently seen surprisingly rapid growth. A focal message of these services is this: How you look is who you are.

The impact of this development as a cultural phenomenon is well worth consideration. Who are these people and why do they want to have pictures of themselves online? What might be the significance of such increased visual self-representation? Important reasons underlying these displays of one’s persona include forging links with a social network, seeking respect and perhaps, more implicitly, building personal identity. It should be understood that the images are simultaneously addressed to oneself and to others. The category of others is then further broken down into friends and strangers, although on the internet the two audiences commingle.

Building personal identity can be seen as a process that results in a projection of self becoming understood by others. Self-representation is a performance in which relationships with others are a constant negotiating process. It is a social state, a stage of sorts on which to control the appearance of self. To an increasing degree, this is taking place online, in a social arena where interaction between individuals differs greatly from face-to-face encounters. This is a liberating aspect when the internet provides an opportunity to act independent of everyday restrictions. For example, anonymous textual communication in principle offers an ideal forum for pure conversation without any external limitations. Visual communication, however, departs from this ideal. As visual aspects become integral to online communication, new pressures are brought to bear. Identification and matters such as beauty and ugliness become framework conditions for online interactions as well as personal ones. This in turn increases the comprehensiveness of communication but may restrict the internet’s potential for emancipation and the space available for building an identity.

By nature, photo galleries necessarily involve a certain type of public privacy, an intermediate state that defies the strict division into the private and the public. Andy Warhol’s concept of 15 minutes of fame hardly applies; these people are not famous, nor will they become famous without the attention of traditional media. On the other hand, they are not satisfied with keeping their privacy to themselves, either. The difficulty of determination reflects the ability of technology to break free of the traditional mould for content dissemination. The audience for material distributed on the internet is more difficult to delineate than in face-to-face interaction. Material available online is extremely global and accessible, at least for the time being, and its audience potentially infinite. This may be difficult to comprehend from a local point of view. The fact that an image may be intended for a person’s circle of acquaintances has no relevance in the eyes of the viewer. The necessary and distancing dissociation between subject and viewer is contained in the interface.

The gallery sites also provide opportunities for interactive dialogue, albeit in the form of commenting on the images on display. On sites based on a premise of criticism, displays may occasionally veer into the absurd as men demand that women undress. Scant clothing almost invariably results in higher ranking. The review services are, in fact, a type of reality fantasy based on pure objectification via stereotypical gender conventions; the most popular women look feminine, the men are very masculine. Narcissistic and exhibitionist personalities are attracted to this way of discovering one’s ranking, but what happens to those who fail to make the grade of “babe” – are they relinquished to the sidelines, found wanting and worthless?
The increasing prevalence of easy digital photography and videotaping removes any obstacles to individuals constantly documenting their lives and altering the manner in which they experience life. Abundance becomes a burden, if anything; the problem of what to choose for presentation to others never existed before. Photography was expensive and every photo was carefully considered. An analogy for this development might be found in the innumerable tourists who, in their haste of recording, only have time to experience their holiday after the fact, when viewing photos and videos in the comfort of their home. On the other hand, this type of recording and subsequent re-representation of the experience also serves a social function by allowing the experience to be shared with others. The performance of life becomes a virtual image of what actually happened, to be created through selection and re-selection.

The process of documentation and selection enables a whole new way of building and presenting an ideal self. At core, that must be what is at issue here. People present online their personal ideal image of what they wish others to see in them. In addition to fragmentary snapshots, the continuity of documentation allows a new kind of temporal narrative in which it is possible, to a substantial degree, to edit the tale one tells of oneself.

The 19th century city provided the Baudelairean flaneur with an opportunity to wander the streets anonymously, to watch and experience the flow of modern life without any obligation to participate. Likewise, the internet through its photo gallery websites offers the online flaneur a similar experience of anonymous watching. Originally flaneurism was a public undertaking on city streets. Within the confines of online photo gallery websites, the experience easily transforms into voyeurism, a sneak peek into the shared privacy of others. In terms of the viewer and the artist, the photo galleries nonetheless offer enormous opportunity. After all, let us not forget that each individual portrayed made a self-representation long before the artist’s work started.