Selfie 2.0

The selfie is a self-portrait photo that is quite widespread in social networks today. The history of this type of photography is much longer than one may expect.

The first photo that can be called a selfie was taken by an American pioneer in photography Robert Cornelius in 1839.

With the popularization of photo cameras in 1900s more and more people started taking pictures of themselves in the mirror. Of course, these were usually wealthy people.

With the social networks, particularly MySpace, rising popularity, people started to post their selfies as profile pictures. Those were with the use of flash, in a bad quality and usually taken through the bathroom mirror. Later, with Facebook becoming more popular, those selfies became to be called “MySpace pics”, were considered unprofessional, and were just a sign of a bad taste. 

That could be the death of the selfie. However, it is back.

In 2010s selfie suddenly started to gain popularity again. Celebrities and politicians started to take selfies of themselves. 

David Oriz (professional baseball player) and Barack Obama taking a selfie

In 2013 the word “selfie” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary and was announced as “The Word of the Year”. And in March 2014 the host of the Academy Award took a selfie of herself with many Hollywood celebrities at once. This selfie outraced Barack Obama’s winning 2012  elections' tweet with 4 times more retweets and became a new leader in the number of retweets.

Why do people take selfies and why have they started to do it again after the period of the selfie being unfashionable?

Experts say different things. When it has just begun, it was an interesting experience. You could take lots of shots, see how you look from different angles without any shame in front of the photographer. Later, with social networks becoming popular, everyone needed a photo, and the easiest way was to take a selfie, as most of other older photos were probably not digital, but on the film.

But what about now? When the world of photography became much more accessible, so that you can buy a professional photo camera or rent a studio for a professional photographer to make a whole photosession of you? The easiest explanation is that selfies are for those people who do not like how other people take photos of them. When taking a selfie, you are making a composition by yourself, catching the best smile, doing as many shots as you want and in the most attractive pose. What is more, selfie is considered less glamorous, without pretending you are a model, just humble and easy. 

However, some people may disagree and say that it is more a vanity act, boasting your life in front of the others, catching the best look to make your friends jealous. 

And finally, some people claim that a selfie is way of self-expression, trying to share the extraordinary atmosphere they are now. They say a selfie has become an analogue to an instant message, telling friends where you are, what you do and how you feel much beter and faster.

All these thoughts may be true.

And the world around us seems to become more and more selfie-friendly. Mobile phone producers are constantly improving the quality of their front cameras, giving us an opportunity to take better selfies. No one will consider you weird, if they see you out on the street taking a selfie in front of the Coliseum. 

Companies are even starting to produce special machines to make taking selfies easier! iStrategyLabs recently introduced their S.E.L.F.I.E. (“The Self Enhancing Live Feed Image Engine”) that enables you to take selfies hands-free with the use of a special mirror.  

Also, more and more people may be seen with GoPro cameras on sticks taking selfie-videos and photos of themselves. As the GoPro is made specifically for using in extreme locations, the selfie phenomenon now has traveled to all the most beautiful and unique places in the world: mountaints, forests, underwater, historical places and winter Olympics.

Lots of people in world do it. And even a monkey stole a GoPro camera, ran to the forest and shot a selfie video of itself.

Making this long way through the centuries, selfie changed its roles in different times. And today it came back in a completely new form. With technologies becomeing advanced and accessible we can take a camera to more and more unique places, sharing our experience. Sefie is becoming our way to express ourselves, telling the world how deep you can dive and how high you can climb. 

With the life becoming so fast, when there is only one special moment that you can catch, why not make a selfie and tie your life, your experience, your history to that moment? Selfie is back, and it’s beautiful.

Macaca nigra taking a selfie