The selfie gene: Putting on our best face
"11 years ago today, Me & Britney invented the selfie!" Paris Hilton tweeted in 2017, while posting two pictures of the duo from 2006. The bold claim amused and outraged social media users, who promptly roasted her and dubbed it as a shameless assault on truth. However, she may want to take credit for being the tipping point, inadvertently, for what has come to be known as ‘fake news’.
The picture (above) is considered to be the earliest photographic self-portrait ever taken. The picture was clicked in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast from Philadelphia. Silver plates were used in daguerrotype (a pioneering photographic process invented in August 1839) to produce a likeness on the plate. Robert, experimenting to improve the process in October, set up a daguerrotype camera behind his family store. He captured the image by removing the lens cap, getting in front of the frame and posing for a minute while the exposed lens burned his image onto the plate.
Chinese giant Meitu has almost literally transformed the face of China. The company sells a range of smartphones designed particularly to take flattering selfies. Meitu’s apps -- BeautyPlus and BeautyCam -- have more than a billion downloads. More than half the selfies uploaded on Chinese social media have been edited using Meitu’s apps. It has had an inevitable consequence: the more that people doctor their selfies, the more everyone ends up looking the same. A recently added filter called “personality” attempts to correct that!
NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin takes a selfie while doing an EVA (extravehicular activity) during the Gemini 12 mission in 1966. Before taking the shot, Aldrin lifted his helmet visor, so that his face, smiling, could be seen. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the mission in 2016, the image debuted on 'First Selfie in Space' t-shirts, the proceeds going to ShareSpace foundation dedicated to educational programs for children.
DEMON SELFIE (April 13, 2017)
If you are Ravana and are taking a selfie, where do you even begin pointing? A young man dresses as the multi-headed Ravana during a religious rally to celebrate the Gajan Festival in Kolkata. It’s a tradition for devotees to dress up as characters from Hindu epics and go around, awaiting fulfillment from the mythical God Shiva.
This viral selfie, displayed at the Museum of Selfies, in Glendale, California was taken by Naruto, a crested black macaque in the jungles of Sulawesi, Indonesia, using nature photographer David J. Slater's smartphone. It became the subject of a complicated copyright lawsuit. A US court recently ruled that Naruto couldn't own the copyright, being a monkey.
Mamu is a man of few words but then it is his business. He walks about confidently, poker faced, tapping his stick, and every vendor in the vicinity of the India Gate monument in New Delhi shakes hands with him. He allows tourists to pose with him and pay him whatever they like. He makes about Rs 500 in a couple of hours and disappears.
MOST TWEETED SELFIE (March 2, 2014)
'Best photo ever.', Oscars 2014 host Ellen Degeneres tweeted the famous selfie. The jury is still out on that but it was definitely a record-breaking one. DeGeneres headed into the front row audience and whipped out her phone. The tweet soon got 80,000 retweets in three minutes and over one million in less than an hour, quickly becoming the most retweeted image ever (beating Obama's election win photo). The celebrity-packed selfie had one outsider though. Actress Lupita N'yongo's opportunistic brother, Peter, a non-actor.
CELL-FIE (April 24, 2018)
Delhi’s Modern School students click selfies inside a police cell during their visit to Barakhamba Road Police station. The students were there to get first-hand knowledge of medico legal and investigative procedures to be followed in cases of sexual offense. More than five rape cases were reported on an average everyday in New Delhi last year.
SELFIE SONG (May 14, 2017)
Who is Dinchak Pooja? An internet and social media sensation. What does she do? Feature in song videos written, composed and sung by her. She is about 23 years old.
Is she popular? One of her videos is a selfie song -- ‘Selfie Maine Leli Aaj’ -- which went viral, and has garnered a whopping 33 million views on YouTube.
It's a noteworthy feat given that her singing is tone-deaf and off-note.
The pursuit of a perfect selfie can turn deadly. India accounts for maximum number of selfie deaths globally, most of it near water or train tracks. It is such a serious issue that Mumbai police have designated fifteen spots, mostly near beaches and forts, as 'no-selfie' zones. Following another worrying trend, wildlife officials in Odisha have also raised an alarm: people in rural Odisha killed by wild elephants when they get too close in an attempt to take selfies with them!
THE-SELF-AS-OTHERS SELFIE (2009 onwards)
Look closely. All these images are of the photographer Olivier Culmann dressed up as the quintessential Indian man. He uses his staged self-portraits as a tool to explore the representation of self and otherness. These photos depict coded constructs that contribute to building one’s self identity: Religion, caste, social class, occupation and regional origin. But it begs the quintessential Indian question: Was the identity of one’s own choosing or was it fate?
Source: LibraryOfCongress, RingedLibrary, NewYorker, NASA, BBC
