The "A 'Selfie' Pioneer" Story

A "selfie" I took as we were waiting for our plane to take off.

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about the current craze of taking photos of oneself which is called a  "selfie".  Most think it is something that was just invented by the younger generation, but they would be wrong in their thinking.  For, you see, the first known "selfie" was taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839 who produced a daguerreotype of himself.  

Dagurreotype Robert Cornelius took of himself
in 1839.  "The first light Picture ever taken.

Photo was actually one of the first photographs of a person that can be documented.  Because the process of daguerreotype was extremely slow, he was able to uncover the lens, run into the shot for a minute or more, and then replace the lens cap to end the photo.  It is recorded on the back of the daguerreotype that it is "The first light Picture ever taken.  1839."  I also was able to find a "selfie of an Edwardian woman taking her photo in a mirror in roughly 1900.  The invention of the portable Kodak Brownie box camera in 1900 gave people the chance to take not only photos of events and happenings, it allowed them to take photos of themselves.  And, so the "selfie" was born.  

Early Edwardian woman taking her picture in
mirror in approximately 1900.

The "selfie" was usually done by using a mirror and stabilizing the camera on a nearby object or on a tripod.  The Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Ninkolaevna was perhaps the first teenager to create a "selfie" when at the age of 13 she took her photo with the use of a mirror and sent it to a friend in 1914.  As you see by her "selfie", it wasn't a nude as is the case so often today.  By the end of 2012, Time Magazine considered "selfie" one of the "top 10 buzzwords" of that year.  By the year 2013 "selfie" had become so commonplace that it was included in the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary.  

The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia taking
one of the first teenage "selfless" in 1914.

If only the kids of today would realize that the "selfie" wasn't an invention of their generation, they might not take as many of them.  As for me,  I have been taking "selfies" (actually I'm stretching the term a bit) since we have started traveling in 1999.  Every trip, as soon as we are seated on the airplane, I grab the point-and-shoot and take a photo of Carol and me.  Good way to start a slide show or scrapbook entry.  I guess I can consider myself "hip" for taking a "selfie" such as that.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

"Selfie" of a female Celebes crested macaque in North Sulavesi, Indonesia.  She grabbed a photographer's camera and photographed herself with it.  

Photo that David Ortiz of the Boston Redsox took a "selfie" of himself and President Obama.

Final "selfie" that I took of Carol and myself while riding on a ferry from St.  Martin to Pinel Island in the Caribbean.