SELFIES
Somehow
or other, my curiosity has been aroused whenever I have seen the word selfie. I looked it up in the dictionary and did not
find any definition for it. My further
study indicated that on November 19, 2013 Oxford Dictionaries announced it as
its Word of the Year. Research by its
language editors reveals that the frequency of the word in the English language
has increased by 17,000 percent. Selfie
is not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) but is being considered for
future inclusion. Now, what does it
mean? It is a self-portrait photograph
usually taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone that is uploaded
to social media.
The
impact modern technology has made on cultures is amazing. Think about it! Before the dawn of a camera, self-portraits
were created by hand. Witness those of great artists such as Vincent Van Gogh,
Paul Cezanne, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Salvatore
Dali, Pierre Renoir and Rafael. Today, with a click on a camera, a selfie is
formed.
And,
what a remarkable invention the camera is! Its origin dates back to the ancient Chinese
and Greeks when the principles behind the pinhole camera or camera obscura were
developed where the image is flipped upside down because light travels in
straight lines from its source.
Eventually, the theory of optics emerged. The daguerreotype (French) method was
introduced in 1839 as the first publicly announced photographic process to come
into widespread use. We may remember
seeing some of those daguerreotypes produced by Mathew Brady, a famous military
photographer of the Civil War.
The
introduction of the Kodak Brownie box camera in 1900 led to photographic
self-portraits becoming a more widespread method. Now, the popularity of digital cameras and
smart phones has blossomed like a bed of flowers that really didn’t need to be
watered. The corporations such as Samsung, Sony, Apple, T-Mobile and Verizon
have captured the consumer market.
Secretary
of State John Kerry was in a photograph Thursday, May 2, 2014 in the issue of
the Sun Sentinel while he was visiting a hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is shown taking a selfie with his arm
outreached in front of him while standing among nurses and workers at the Ghandi
Memorial Hospital. Initially, selfies
have become popular with young people, as well as celebrities, and are most
frequently posted on Facebook. Time
magazine by the end of 2012 considered selfie one of the top 10 buzz words of
that year. It is interesting that the
origin of the word selfie has been attributed to a slang expression back in
2002 first appearing in an Australian internet forum (ABC Online) of a Young
Australian who having fallen accidentally while drunk at a mate’s 21st
party apologized profusely while trying to take a picture saying, “and sorry
about the poor focus, it was a selfie”.
Whatever
the case may be, the selfie is here to stay.
Perhaps anyone who has yet to use or own a Smartphone may be out of
touch with the contemporary scene of popular photography.
Maybe it could be enjoyable to use one.
