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Magazine
What is a Selfie?

By Editor Colin Dixon 
Edited and published by Yvette Depaepe, the 28th of June 2024
 

 

Untitled by Michelle Degryse

 

Selfie is slang for Self-Portrait.
It is used today to infer a photographic self-portrait taken on a mobile device with a front-facing camera and shared via social media.
In 2013. "Selfie" was word of the year in the Oxford English Dictionary. The inclusion of front facing cameras on smart phones and the popularity of social media sites like Instagram and Facebook have made the selfie the most popular type of photography with hundreds of millions of selfies posted each day on the internet.

 


THE HISTORY OF SELF PORTRAITS

 

Photographic self-portrait by Robert Cornelius, 1839

 

 

Unidentified woman taking her picture in a mirror, c. 1900

 

 

Crewman of a German, World War 1 aircraft takes a picture with a camera attached to a wing-strut.

 

In 1839, Robert Cornelius, an American pioneer in photography, produced a daguerreotype of himself which ended up as one of the first photographs of a person. Because the process was slow, he was able to uncover the lens, run into the shot for a minute or more, and then replace the lens cap.  Little did he know he had invented the selfie.

 

In early 1900’s another technique was using a mirror and stabilizing the camera either on a nearby object or on a tripod while framing via a viewfinder at the top of the box, ]Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, at the age of 13, was one of the first teenagers to take her own picture using a mirror to send to a friend in 1914.

 

During the 1970s, photographic self-portraiture flourished when affordable instant cameras created a new medium of self-expression, and allowing amateurs to learn photography with immediate results. This was another move towards today's selfies.

 

In the 1960’s to the 1980’s Photo Booth Selfies as we would now call them became popular. Their intended use was for us to produce images of ourselves for passports and other official documents but they were also used by all of us for the production of images of ourselves and friends.

 


SOCIAL MEDIA POPULARITY

Selfies have been popular on social media. Instagram has over 70 million photos tagged with the hashtag #selfie.

Social media apps like Instagram and Facebook encourage people to take selfies with features like Geofilters, hashtag linking of related topics, and picture stories. Geofilters allow people to take selfies with overlays that can be comedic, altering your selfie image and there are also filters to change your appearance. Geotagging is the ability to show where you are located.  Instagram boasts 500 million daily active users of its self-promotion,

 


Of course on 1x we have many amazing artists who use selfies as their style/creativity or use pictures of people taking selfies to create their art for us all to enjoy.
Here are some of our selfie artists creations

 

'Happy New Year' by Sandro Sardoz

 

 

'Pop-Eye' by Łukasz Pietrzak

 

 

'Lonely men walk lonely cities 2' by Adrian Donoghue

 

'Spare Heads' by Petri Damstén

 

 

'Painting within a Painting 2' by Edith Hoffman

 

 

'Selfie' by Pawel Pentlinowski

 

 

'What is your poison?' by JP Palmunen

 

 

'Avatar' by Timothy Tichy

 

 

'My street selfie' by Sofie Steenhoudt

 

 

'Self-Timer n°11' by Roberto Di Patrizi

 

 

'Just a selfie' by Robert Girmencea

 

'The Slightly Overambitious Selfie' by John Flury

 

'MonkeyPhone' by Marcel Egger

 

 

'Selfie at Snow' by Mustafa Tiryakioglu

 

 

'Vintage Selfie' by Rod Clemen

 

 

'Mona Lisa' by Oleg Dudko

 

 

'Iseo 2023-07' by Adam Street Photographer

 

 

Write
Wonderful article! Thanks Colin and Yvette for including my picture, I am honored. Kind regards
Thank you very much for this excellent and inspiring article. Both the text and the images that comprise it are magnificent. Kind regards
Thank you so much
Very interesting and informative article, well done Colin.
very informative and entertaining, thank you!
Thank you Use
Sorry spell check abuse Uwe :(
Too fabulous! Thanks Colin and Yvette
Thank you, Jane !
Thank you :)