This week, the English model Alexa Chung posted a carousel to her Instagram page with a series of photos from a security camera mounted outside her home in London. Even through the tiny, grainy fisheye lens, she looks chic and unbothered by the glass eye watching her come and go. In one photo, she wears a green short sleeve blouse from Miu Miu — the label is discernable even in the photo’s low resolution — and a taupe skirt with white ballet flats. Even though the camera is pointed out towards the street, the angle of the photo is such that the viewer can peer into her front room and see her welcome mat and floorboards.
It’s become a series of sorts for Chung who has posted a few doorbell camera galleries in recent months. It is also, perhaps, a commentary on her life already being surveilled by hungry paparazzi and tabloid photographers. People are always watching her, so why not take a little control?
Surveillance cameras, like selfies, are everywhere, and it was only a matter of time before people started putting the two together. The surveillance selfie has started emerging everywhere: people take photos of themselves being watched by the self-checkout line cameras at Target, and others take self-portraits with their car’s backup cameras. A programmer named Morry Kolman even set up a website that helped people use the publicly available feeds of New York City traffic cameras to take pictures of themselves.
