Who invented the selfie?
THE SELFIE is one of the most iconic ways to take a photo.
What many people might not know is that the selfie has been around for longer than you may think.
Who invented the selfie?
The selfie was invented in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast from Philadelphia.
He is known for designing the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the United States.
While setting up his camera to take a family picture, Cornelius captured the first selfie by taking off the lens cap, running into the frame, waiting a minute, then putting the lens cap back on.
He wrote on the back of the image: “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”
What is a selfie?
The 2013 Oxford Dictionaries word of the year, a selfie is defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”
Selfies are most commonly shared on social media and taken with a digital camera or smartphone.
A selfie is considered one as long as the photo is taken by the person or one of the people in the picture.
The most famous selfie in social media history was taken in 2014 by Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars.
The photo contained multiple celebrities alongside Ellen, including Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o, Peter N’yong’o, and Angelina Jolie.
For many years, Ellen’s selfie was the most retweeted picture on Twitter, with over 3.4 million retweets.
“The selfie is revolutionizing how we gather autobiographical information about ourselves and our friends,” Dr. Mariann Hardley, a lecturer in marketing at Durham University told The Guardian in 2013.
“It’s about continuously rewriting yourself. It’s an extension of our natural construction of self. It’s about presenting yourself in the best way similar to when women put on makeup or men who bodybuild to look a certain way: it’s an aspect of performance that’s about knowing yourself and being vulnerable.”
What is the most expensive selfie?
In 2014, a photo that was taken in the 1850s became the world’s most expensive selfie.
Oscar Rjlander captured a self-portrait and gifted it to naval hydrographer Captain George Browing in the 19th century.
The photo was passed down through generations when in 2014, it sold at an auction for $115,000, making it the most expensive selfie in the world.
The estimated value of the album it was in was $16,000, by the time it was sold at auction, it sold at 700x the initial reserve.