In this article, it starts off talking about the selfie, which they describe as, "a cultural mass phenomenon of the early 21st century, inseparably related to the development and triumph of the smartphone with integrated camera." Although this definition is correct, we have also been creating 'selfies' since the Renaissance days through portraits and such. (As an example I put a self portrait from this time down below
) Now we use self portraits as photos and post them on various social media accounts as 'self depictions' and may begin to want to portray something that is not yourself. Going back in time to the Renaissance era, the self depiction paintings that were being made were there to express emotion and to tell a story, rather than to show off who you are. In the first photo shown is one of the paintings that had set the foundation for self portraits from then on. The making of a self portrait back in the day was an abundance of work and cost a lot of money. As for self portraits in the current say, or otherwise known as selfies, they take a matter of seconds to take. The article describes it as a "product of spontaneous intuition," which I agree with and is a big contrast to the way we use to make self portraits. Overall, I am not sure if it is a positive or negative thing to have such an easy way to create self portraits. On one hand it is nice to create such an easy way to remember specific moments, but on the other these selfies do not nearly hold as much emotion and beauty as they used to.
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