‘Selfie’ was the Oxford dictionary word of the year in 2013 and it doesn’t look like it’s being forgotten any time soon, there is even a national selfie day (it’s June 21st by the way)! We clearly live in the age of the selfie and lets face it, we’ve all had that shameless selfie moment, even if we don’t want to admit it (#nofilter right?). With the vast majority of phones having (some with such high quality that people are ditching their professional equipment), that genius invention that is the selfie stick – and now even – it’s easier than ever to get that perfect picture.
Selfie history
This isn’t just a recent phenomenon though, as we all know, the ‘selfie’ has actually been around for hundreds of years, way before the Kardashians even existed. Back then only artists were capable of creating self-portraits and none did it better than Rembrandt van Rijn who made many portraits of himself during his career in the 1600s. with a keen passion for self-portraiture include Van Gough, Frida Kahlo, and Pablo Picasso, all taking the ‘selfie’ to a more artistic level.
On a more technological level, it has been claimed that the first ever camera selfie was taken in 1839 by a guy called Robert Cornelius who took his selfie by removing the lens cap of his camera, running into the frame, sitting for a good few minutes, and then putting the lens cap back on – a far cry from the simple point and click method we use today. Fast forward a few hundred years and selfies are no longer limited to an exclusive group of artists, every man and their dog () now has the ability to snap, share, and hashtag away to their content.
Social media
has had a massive impact on the quantity of selfies. With no platform to share your perfect pout, would there be any need to even take the picture in the first place? In 2013 a search in Instagram for #selfie bought up over 23 million results and today the same search brings up over 294 million! Now more than ever, people are excited at the prospect of documenting where they’re going and what they’re up to and sharing it with the rest of the world. It seems that if you haven’t taken a selfie, were you even there?
More than vanity
Selfies aren’t just a way to show off on social media though, they’ve evolved a more meaningful purpose when #nomakeupselfie was used to raise over £8m for Cancer Research UK. The trend started in 2014 and saw thousands of women posting selfies of their au natural faces. Granted, it wasn’t intended as a campaign but you can’t deny the power of selfies and social media for the greater good.
If you, like millions of others, are dedicated to the art of taking selfies then you might be interested in the . ‘From Selfie to Self-expression’ is opening at the end of this month and there is even a competition so send in your best #Saatchiselfie and you could end up on the big screen.
Selfies in stock photography
So what does the ‘selfie’ mean for your stock photography? Well, we are seeing an increase in demand for that authentic ‘in the moment’ type photography that selfies capture so well. Posed pictures are definitely still needed but the focus has shifted to candid and ‘real life’ images.
We all know that the selfie is going to be around (probably) forever, and there are already talks of using selfies for medical purposes, banking security, retail shopping, robotics, and even ‘selfiecoasters’ (that’s taking a selfie whilst on a rollercoaster). What do you think the next big thing will be? Or have we taken the concept of the ‘selfie’ as far as it can go?