The First Selfie

The image in question was taken in 1839 by an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast from Philadelphia named Robert Cornelius.

Cornelius had set his camera up at the back of the family store in Philadelphia. He took the image by removing the lens cap and then running into frame where he sat for a minute before covering up the lens again.

On the back he wrote “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”

The First Selfie, 1839

Source:http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/robert-cornelius-self-portrait-the-first-ever-selfie-1839/

Many early self-portraits fall into two general categories.

1. In the first type, which had a long tradition in painted portraits and self-portraits, the subject poses with a camera or a set of photographs, showing him as a professional of his trade.

• As portrait photographers competed for customers, these images demonstrated the photographer’s ability to capture a flattering likeness with his technical skill and his eye for setting and pose.

2. The other type of self-portrait seems to have been the photographer’s attempt to situate photography as a fine art, a novel idea during the era of early photography.

• In a fine example of this type, Albert Sands Southworth, of the firm Southworth and Hawes, showed himself as a classical sculpted portrait bust, with a far-off, romantic expression.

These early practitioners were either professionals with studios or “skilled amateurs” – often wealthy individuals who took up photography as a fashionable hobby. It seems that from photography’s earliest days, there has been a natural tendency for photographers to turn the camera toward themselves, and we continue to see it today in the notion of a selfie. If we can call photography an art form, then selfies might be viewed as reflexive pieces, capturing the person who is usually behind the camera - an act of showcasing the producer.

Sources: http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/selfies-history-self-portrait-photography/