Love Them or Hate Them, Selfies are Redefining Art and Communication

Do you think Joe and O were listening to the “SELFIE#” song on the radio in the back of the presidential car when they decided it was a good idea for the the President to take a selfie?

Did they get the idea from Ellen when she literally crashed Twitter at the Oscars and was awarded the honor of  “most epic selfie of all time“? Or from the Pope?

Or maybe from the slew of celebs (calling the Kardashian sisters!) who bless us with their faces in the form of selfies via social media 24/7? HufPo put these mind-blowing stats out last year on celeb selfies (caution: there are disturbing images that may not be appropriate for children, um, like Geraldo showing his 70-year-old bod off).

How did the selfie get started? Was it Parmigianino’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which dates back to 1523–24? Or was it the creation of social media in a narcissistic age?  An article ran in New York Magazine in February on the History of the Selfie from an art history angle and points out how Van Gogh and Warhol were selfie pioneers. Back in 2010, the artist-critic David Colman wrote in the New York Times that the selfie “is so common that it is changing photography itself.” Colman in turn quoted the art historian Geoffrey Batchen saying that selfies represent “the shift of the photograph [from] memorial function to a communication device.” And a communication device is has truly become.

We may not be able to predict how selfies will evolve with technology, but the one thing we can be certain of is that they’re not going away anytime soon.