words about a website about people's spaces

introduction.

“Peaches, what’s the best thing about living in Brooklyn?” asks the text scrawled, in marker, across the bottom of the photos of Peaches Geldof’s place. Switching colors, she answers back: “The lights when you cross the Brooklyn bridge, and the Spanish gangsters at the bagel shop who hit on me…also Max Drummey.” Charmingly multi-colored, with doodles, scribbles, and little pictures, the throwback handwritten text (compared to the usual typed text found on the Internet) fits right in with the goal of The Selby. As the New York Times explains, Todd Selby (a New York based photographer) had a “curiosity about the ways personal space reflects personality”: from that notion, The Selby was born.

The Selby is pictures of people’s spaces and stuff. The pictures are mostly of young, good-looking subjects - “movie directors, fashion models and designers, painters, writers, indie magazine editors,” as the New York Times summarizes it - though the occasional over-40 manages to sneak in. The spaces are, even when messy, artfully messy, as if each stray object had been carefully placed there. The visits aren’t surprises; as Brian Lichtenberg explained to the NYT, “[h]e liked being part of Mr. Selby’s project…because ‘it was a good excuse to make the apartment tidy and nice.’”

The sheer aesthetic pleasure of these shots is almost overwhelming. Photography dates back to the 1820s; it is refreshing to see an old medium presented in a new way (online). Photographs have long been accepted as a system of signs (see Jonathan Bignell’s Media Semiotics: An Introduction). The subjects of these photographs, as said before, are mostly young; even those that are not young (Tom Wolfe, here’s to you) are distinguished and expertly weathered, notable, or all of the above. The subjects all seem to share two things: quite a bit of money, and spaces that are surreal in their fantasticness. As Krysten Ritter, model-turned-actress, exclaims in the NYT article, “‘Every day I’m, like, really? Is this really our house?’” Yes, yes it is.

feminist theory in the selby.

Other themes run throughout the photos. Despite their differences, the women all seem to pose the same: either playful-adorable-sexy with hints of Lolita, or playful-adorable-sexy with hints of maturity. What’s striking is the amount of leg in each photo featuring women; rather than obvious sexuality, the naked-from-the-waist down has an air of implied sexuality. Maria Sturken and Lisa Cartwright point out in Practices of Looking that, “[n]o matter what social role an image plays, the creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization.” (16) What choice is Mr. Selby making, then? The dichotomy between the poses of men and poses of women are all too clear when looking at the shots of couples; the woman is playful, happy, sexual while the man is shown with more power and assertion.

Even the usage of ‘women’ must be carefully considered; Peaches was a mere 19 at the time of the shooting. Isabelle McNally, another subject, is also still in her teens. Krysten Ritter stares coquettishly at the camera, with her legs tantalizingly stretched out in front of her. As Marshall McLuhan explains in “The Mechanical Bride,” “legs, like busts, are power points which [the modern girl] has been taught to tailor…She knows that ‘a long-legged gal can go places.’” This hyper-sexualization of female legs in the media is portrayed not just in these Selby photographs but is prevalent throughout media in general: another example is Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” music video. The hip-shaking, leg-extending, stiletto-wielding women in this video, while singing about being “single ladies,” are doing exactly what McLuhan hypothesized: they’re wielding the power they know they have through their legs (and it doesn’t hurt that the formfitting top shows off their perfect bodies).

Their power is not relegated to their long legs; they wield a power through their gazes, too. Chase Cohl stares at the camera exactly the way Krysten Ritter just did; unblinkingly, almost smirking but not - one long-legged beauty is traded for another one. A myth (Barthes) is starting to be crafted; these legs and gazes are not just signifying beautiful women but sexuality. “Men look at women.  Women watch themselves being looked at,” John Berger clarifies in Ways of Seeing. (47) Are these women watching themselves being looked at? Eerily, they are; these pictures are up for everyone to see. Who’s looking, and at what point did the focus move from these girl’s material objects to them? Sturken and Cartwright assert that, “looking involves relationships of power.” (10) The photographs are going up on the Internet, so people are going to be looking. The pictures seem almost exploitative. Lily, darling, just because your butt is almost fully covered, it doesn’t mean that these aren’t hypersexual photographs aren’t selling the idea of you - you, who is beautiful, young, wealthy.

These photographs are not traditional advertisements in that, on the surface, they are not selling anything. Nor is there any real purpose other than what was described before (showing personalites through spaces); they just exist as representations of Mr. Selby’s art. Todd Selby is, however, a professional and commercial photographer. The Selby is a pet project of his; yet there is a commercial tie-in. In response to the question, “[d]oes [The Selby] translate into assignments for Todd Selby?” in an interview on aphotoeditor.com, the answer was, “I have been getting a lot more calls from magazines, [and] tons of interest from advertisers…” So perhaps these shots of hypersexualized women serve as indirect advertisements for his own work. That is not the stated purpose, but it still is a useful one.

conspicuous consumption & taste cultures.

The advertiser’s stated interest, the article and the mention in the NYT’s blog The Moment, the other interviews Selby has done; these instances beg the question, why do we care so much? Why this fascination with others “stuff” and living spaces? Stuart Ewen argues in All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture that “the acquisition of style represented a symbolic leap from the constraints of mere substinence.” (26) To further clarify, “conspicuous consumption…was the mark of status.” (27) Thus, all this “stuff” - and our fascination with it - has to do with our desire for status. Hey, s/he has it, I want it too!

Ewen continues to explain that, “[w]ith the emergence of a bourgeois market in style…interest in one-of-a-kind treasures become more widespread.” Chase Cohl says as much in the NYT article. “‘In terms of my decorating style…I love really unique and special stuff.’” This consumption is representative of the fact that those featured can have all of this stuff, because they can afford it. Then, millions of viewers can look at what is featured, and want their cribs, their pads, their places, to look the same. This obsession with other people’s stuff isn’t just on the relatively new Selby; MTV’s Cribs has been around since 2000, and is a moving-picture-with-synchronized sound version of The Selby. The list of those featured is more mass market (T. I., anyone?) and the presentation a little less cultured and upmarket, but it’s essentially the same idea. Even when featuring the mega-famous on The Selby, (description of Michael Stipe: “musician,” as if he’s not the lead singer for one of the most well-known bands of the past two decades) there is no focus on the fact that they’re famous. On the other hand, MTV Cribs exists solely because those who are featured are famous. The distinction, therein, lies with what’s our (the audience’s) primary obession: who these people are or what their stuff is. Though both are interesting and the two are interlinked, stuff comes first for The Selby but vice versa for MTV’s Cribs; from that, too, can one get the classification of highbrow for The Selby (versus barely middlebrow for Cribs, if not relegated to lowbrow).

According to Herbert Gans, in The Popular Culture-High Culture Disctinction: Still Relevant?, “in popular language, there are three taste cultures: highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow.” (7) New York Magazine brilliantly breaks down taste cultures in their weekly Approval Matrix; recent events, meet taste culture.

But is The Selby highbrow, middlebrow, or lowbrow? Though the instinctive answer would be highbrow, because The Selby is featuring conspicuous consumption of the upper classes in a tasteful manner, perhaps the better classification is John Seabrook’s “nobrow” as defined in the 1999 New Yorker article “Nobrow Culture.” According to Seabook, “commerical culture is a source of status and currency rather than the thing that the élite define themselves against;” the commercial culture pervasive throughout The Selby would arguably support The Selby’s classification of nobrow. Seabrook continues on to explain, in reference to a t-shirt, “[i]t’s anti-status as status, another important principle in Nobrow.” This neo-grunge look, borne out of commercial culture desire, fits the aesthetic of The Selby perfectly: for example, Michael Stipe looks nobrow in his casual clothing; Alexander Wang’s sneakers are juxtaposed against the leather couch; etc. Guesses to how much those sneakers cost? Hint: a lot.

a little bit of the hyperreal & postmodernism.

It’s tempting to end with “The Selby is representative of so many things it shouldn’t be” kind of deal. It shows women in a somewhat exploitative light. It shows the rise of commercial culture and obsession with style, borne out of wanting “stuff.” Everything ends up commodified, anyways (thanks, Adorno & Horkheimer). It shows the delicate balance between highbrow and lowbrow and what just ends up being nobrow. What does that leave us with?

It leaves us with, regardless of everything else, the fact that the shots are beautiful. They’re entertaining. They’re fascinating. Yet it needs to be noted that photographs have the ability to “exaggerate experience” and “create believable imagistic fictions.” (Ewen 40) This is the heart of photograph’s power; this is how they depict and transmit style. The “realities” that we’re aspiring to, that we see in these photos - aren’t realities. They’re real like Disneyland is real (Shaviro-style, not Braudillard). Don’t worry about the crumbling economy. Don’t worry about swine flu. You’re going to die of something anyways, whether it be stress from the former or pneumonia related to the latter. Just enjoy looking at other people’s stuff. What Shaviro said about Disneyland applies to The Selby too - “[n]ow everyday banality can have the shattering intensity of a full-blown psychosis.” (17) And what are these pictures but everyday banality? Most teenagers’ rooms are going to look like this at some point, whether it be blamed on finals or stress or if they embrace their daily and habitual inner slob.

So, this means for us: we’re aspiring towards the fake. Jean Baudrillard, you may have been using a map/territory metaphor, but fast-forward a couple decades and The Selby is the hyperreal. There’s no more “mirror of being and appearances, of real and concept” (3) because these aren’t “real” in the way we want them to be real. We want these fabulous lives full of stuffs to exist so that one day we can have these fabulous lives too, but they don’t. Isabelle McNally is a teenager - where are the pictures of the ramen noodles? Let’s even assume that, being as she’s the daughter of famed restraunteur Keith McNally (mastermind behind Pastis and Balthazar), she has access to foodstuffs that normal teenagers can only dream of. Still, where’s the mundane, the banal, like her iPod charger? That weird wire thing that came with your cell phone that you’re not really sure what it does but keep it anyways just-in-case? These things aren’t there, because these pictures are a perfectly crafted “reality.”

so, finally.

So the takeaway is this: view with caution. Understand that you’re viewing the hyperreal, the manifestation of commercial culture, the hypersexualization of women. To be honest, I’m going to keep looking. Is that hypocritical? Completely, totally, yes. But these pictures are fun and interesting. In a perfect world I wouldn’t be interested, but I am - I want to keep clicking. Congrats, Mr. Selby - I think this means you’ve succeeded!

bibliography.

• Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.
• Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
• Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972.
• Bignell, Jonathan. Media Semiotics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
• Ewen, Stuart. All Consuming Images. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
• Mcluhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride - Facsimile. Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 2008.
• Seabrook, John. “Nobrow culture.” The New Yorker. 20 Sept. 1999.
• Shaviro, Steven. Doom Patrols: a Theoretical Fiction about Postmodernism. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1996.
• Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking. City: Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.

(ME)

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