The Art of the Selfie

For ten months, the Philippine photographer Jhoane Baterna-Pateña observed people pursuing one of their favorite activities: the photographic staging of themselves. For this, she visited Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong, a centrally located tourist site, which is a must especially for tourists from the Chinese mainland. The photographer was fascinated by the lively, theatrical hustle and bustle of thousands of visitors every day leaving their busses for a short ‘selfie break’, on their way from one photo stop to the next. Her study of the characters, gestures and facial expressions of the selfie photographers is both an enlightening and amusing document of contemporary photography, which is always imbued with great sympathy for her protagonists.