Selfies and self-portraits:
The first self-portrait is believed to have been painted in 1433 by Jan van Eyck. A self portrait is nothing new, artists have been painting themselves for century's, however the selfie (photography's equivalent to the self-portrait) is more of a modern phenomenon most likely aided by smartphones and/or handheld cameras such as the Polaroid. The first 'selfie' was taken in 1839, not known as a selfie then. The photo was taken by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast, he took a picture of himself in the back of his family's chandelier shop. The selfie has seen a surge in popularity in recent years, most likely because of the invention of the front facing camera on phones and the 'selfie stick' . The vast majority of selfies taken now are taken on smartphones. This has made such an impact that the quality of the phones camera is a selling point in new phones.
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< the photo taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839
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Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier was a photographers who worked as a nanny for around 40 years, while still pursuing her work with photographs. Maier only became recognised in 2009 a few months after she passed away. Her work was discovered by a man named John Maloof in 2007, where he found a box of negatives of the photos she had taken. In 2008 he started the task of finding the woman who had taken these photos. It's estimated she took around 150,000 photos in her life, the photos were a mix of self portraits and pictures of people she saw in the street and the architecture of the cities. She worked mostly in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, she also travelled and took photos around the world. To the right one of Maiers many self portraits taken in a window |