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 21^st 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.