This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic.

CHICAGO — Selfies are private moments made available for public consumption. When the shutter snaps, the subject realizes that they’re ready to admit something about themselves that would otherwise remain hidden.

Every image in this selection offers up clues about the subject’s identity and sense of self. This isn’t Australia’s Next Top Selfie, a contest for the next top model through the selfie medium, nor do the subjects taking selfies think they’re superheros. Every selfie is a paradoxical blend of the mundane and the magnificent—a public offering and a peek into an otherwise private moment.

Selfies invite voyeurs and onlookers alike to look without feeling as if they are trespassing. These selfies reveal humorous self-deprecation, Snapchat-induced nostalgia, reflections on the beginning of chemotherapy, complicated solutions to technology-induced problems, and a pure lust for sugar. Save for one individual in this series, I’ll admit that I’ve never met any of these people—but I feel like I know them now in a superficial kind of way. Through an offering of complicit voyeurism, each person gives me, you and everyone on the internet an opportunity to look them in the eyes, allowing us to seem them the way they would like to be seen.

Read the full story on Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/2013/07/29/i_selfie_a_gallery_of_first_person_portraits_partner/singleton/

or on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/75644/revealing-your-inner-selfie/