The ‘Selfie’

The ‘selfie’ is a relatively new visual genre of fast selfportraiture where the subject is the photographer, and the picture is captured and often uploaded to social networking websites – usually you can see the person’s arm. ‘Selfies’ pre-date the actual term itself with the first known selfportrait photograph debatably captured as early as 1839 by an American pioneer in photography, Robert Cornelius.

The earliest known reference of a ‘selfie’ appeared in the ABC Online science forum on 13 September 2002 posted from the servers of the University of New England in Armidale, and first appeared as a hashtag (#selfie) on Flickr in 2004. ‘Selfies’ have become a modern phenomenon and strictly speaking are a digital affair, experiencing a recent meteoric rise following the release of the front facing camera within smart phones.

The most notable ‘selfie’ to date was captured by Ellen DeGeneres with a small group of A-list celebrities at the 86th annual Academy Awards, which was retweeted more than three million times and has been appropriated numerous times, such as when The Simpsons creator Matt Groening shared a cartoon version showing an ‘alternate view’.

Key terms: selfie, social network, appropriation, self-portrait

Explore: Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Snapchat, Twitter

Questions

1. Are ‘selfies’ portraits? Explain your answer.

2. What do you use ‘selfies’ for?

Suggested Activities

• As a group, recreate the poses in some of the artworks in The Percivals or research some famous portraiture examples and appropriate those.