Self-Representational Photography at the British Museum

Abstract

Historically, personal photography wasn’t allowed in museums, but today, visitors armed with smartphones share their experiences alongside images of museum artefacts and spaces online. Museum policies regarding personal photography have shifted dramatically, but there remains an element of ‘moral panic’ whenever a visitor is seen taking a selfie. These types of photographs combine a person’s communicative nature with their environment’s cultural context. They are semiotic materials; they associate person, space and object, and once shared online, are understood alongside captions and ‘tags’. The British Museum case study explores the methods and motivations behind this communication via the museum selfie. A random sample of selfies shared on Instagram during a 7-day period, at the Museum in 2022, were analysed using grounded theory, with Barthes’ ideas of connotation and denotation applied to open up and assess the meaning of these photographs. The analysis considers how these photographs, captured at a national museum, may contribute to the development and presentation of an individualised sense of self. This is supplemented with evidence from museum policy, revealing shifting attitudes towards personal photography.
Research shows that visitors use a variety of tactics to communicate personalised messages, inscribing notions of authenticity and experiential narrative while projecting images of both the self and the museum.