You are dead on with the faceworking. I would argue that the millennial generation is very cognizant of their faceworking, although they do not call it that, and that Dzhokhar's presentation of self is almost as false or non-genuine as most of the facework you see on facebook and instagram. We select small moments, tiny fragments even, from our lives to represent the totality of our being thus it is never accurate and false so to speak.

There's also something Romantic going on in some selfies - the self reflecting on the self in solitude. That code seems definitely to be at work here (the brooding gaze, the eyes hiding behind the hair). And then that fits with Romantic mythologies of the alienated outsider which can have a part to play in acts of violence.

So the ordinariness of taking the selfie is possibly counterbalanced by that quest for specialness which see here. The self performing a drama of both shunning others (hiding behind the fringe, expressing rejection of social interaction through the sulky face) and needing them (putting the picture on social media, or demanding an audience on a huge and horrific scale).

Does this feed the narcissism of those who already feel empowered to take other people's lives? The size of the picture might deserve more attention; when was the last time you saw a posed photo of a single person, of that size, on the first page of the NYT?

"there is something simultaneously fitting and upsetting in the young bomber taking his own mugshot"

this is what most struck me about it! so often the photos splayed across papers are mugshots—photos that show a person captured, dominated and neutralized, deprived of agency; photos that are cold and hard; photos that are almost deliberately unflattering. yet in this, the image that arguably will come to represent (even define) Dzhokhar Tsarnaev comes to us through his own vision, not through the gaze of the state. i'm not certain i can think of another case where this has happened.

that through this image and its page 1 NYT placement, Tsarnaev retains some semblance of agency—a way to speak freely for himself, even though he's no longer free and can no longer speak; a way to remain who he was rather than who he became, and who the prosecution (and much of the world) will say he is—is just so endlessly fascinating to me.

(agree the intent was probably the seeming disconnect between "look it's a nice teenage boy" and "this is what a bomber looks like"; also wondering if maybe he doesn't have a mugshot yet, if he's still in the hospital?)

last thought, along the lines of Goffman's "face work": Holy Reveal And Conceal, Batman.

Of course, with the NYT posting this photo on their front page, one could argue that their intent was to create a sense of otherness through the aspect of 'similarity'. Here I'm cribbing from Deloria's 'Indians in Unexpected Places', so please bear with me as I quote some lines from his 'Violence' essay in the book:

"In theory, assimilation solved the 'Indian Problem,' turning Indian people into Americans by 'killing the Indian and saving the man.' In practice, many white Americans- particularly those recently intruded into Indian territory- found the prospect of a too close similarity between Indians and non-Indians disquieting." (45)

And this quote, from earlier in the essay:

"As a white fear and expectation, then, 'outbreak' offered a new understanding of violence, one poised to replace the 'surround' and 'the last stand.' Outbreak was more rebellion than war, as much social and cultural as military, and intimately concerned with the extent to which Indians had or had not been assimilated or forcibly incorporated into American civil society. *It entered minds at the moment when it was clear that the war was over but not yet perfectly clear all the battles had yet been fought.* (Emphasis mine, 27-28)

A great deal many people know that Dzhokhar was a recent immigrant, and that his citizenship was only a short, chronological distance removed from the bombing incident. His photo reminds viewers that he embodies all the hallmarks of similarity to our societal norms, but the alleged bombing act combined with immigrant background are instantly summoned at the same time one views the 'selfie'- and the sense of the other is replicated anew. Dzhokhar might have had agency in creating the photo, but its use in the NYT would lend itself more to distancing, to creating the other, by exposing the naked 'similarity' his photo-act reveals. In becoming too close, his selfie creates a 'similarity gap' that quickly becomes a chasm for which the 'other' can be clearly defined.

If you combine this with the recent stories coming out on how terrorist organizations are using modern technology to educate and train small groups, then the second quote I provided above becomes more clear. Many would see the Boston Bombings as an 'outbreak' of terrorism, and having a recently naturalized citizen become the alleged suspect in such a bombing reinforces for many the idea that the war on terror still has battles to be fought. Dzhokhar becomes another symbol for the failed process of assimilation through his use of an 'Instagrammed' selfie, and the sense of 'outbreak' only reinforces for the viewer the idea that he never wanted to become an American, thus could never be one of 'us'- only the 'other' many have come to fear.

So I'm not sure the use of the photo makes modern culture see itself, or that violence, in this case, came from a distinct 'non-other'. Perhaps it lends more to the idea that Dzhokhar could never be modern in the first place, he could only be the 'other'.

I wonder about the banal fact of his whiteness. How presenting him as attractive actually helps to save whiteness. His attractiveness allows for a different kind of reading, a reach for psychological depth (in Discipline and Punish Foucault describes the ultimate form of discipline as a never-ending quest for knowledge, the endless production of data, psychological, biological, and so on).

Contrast this with the faces of most black criminals, which often emphasize ugliness: unkempt, odd, undesirable, often in prison garb.

I'm intrigued by what surface is being saved and for what reason: the surface, something called whiteness, must be saved. A lot of labor happening in this photograph.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev created this image (can we really call it a photograph at all, photography being pretty much extinct) as a virtual artifact which the Times transformed into an analog artifact, (analog being the proper opposite of virtual/digital which all are after all, matter and energy and information differing only in the informational dimension) at least insofar as a copy of the paper, and therefore the front page, sits on my couch like an archeological artifact which is to say, to borrow a Haraway phrase, a copy without an original, patina and all, because it is a simulacrum, that is to say, something intentionally distorted to appear correct to the viewer, which is to say an other without a subject, even if the viewer was, or included DT himself.

What I find additionally disturbing about this front page selfie is the article title and subhead that go along with it. "The Dark Side, Carefully Masked" and "Bombing Suspect Hid a Troubled Second Life". So what are we to read as the "dark side", "the mask" and the "second life" here? It's deeply ambiguous and all reads are problematic for one reason or another. Heck, there's even got a digital dualist read tucked in there (e.g., Instagram-style selfie as indicator of another, darker and troubled self...the self that lives on the internet and gets into trouble there).

Nathan, I was just curious to see whether you've thought more about the issues raised in this post, especially in the wake of today's discussions of the Tsarnaev Rolling Stone cover.