If you thought selfies were hip, edgy and technologically savvy, think again.
Self-portraits or selfies have been around since photography became an affordable hobby for millions in the mid 19th century.
For some privileged folks, the craze began even earlier, predating Paul McCartney’s recent claim to have invented the art form. “Most people don’t know that I invented the selfie,” the rock legend told Jimmy Fallon.
While taking a hilarious selfie and posting it on Instagram may seem modern, your great-great-great gran probably took selfies in her youth and may even have shared copies of her snaps. Confused? let us explain.
Is thing on? Accidental selfies
No this isn’t some new Instagram filter you are looking it, this is a daguerreotype image taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839. The Dutch-born US chemist was a pioneer in the daguerreian light process which created one-off photographs that were like portrait paintings as the sitter had to remain still for long periods of time. “That’s why portrait people look sombre as it was painful to sit and smile for twenty minutes,” National Portrait Gallery curator Joanna Gilmour told News Corp Australia.
This photograph Cornelius took of himself with his arms crossed is widely regarded as one of the oldest examples of photographic portraits. It’s also a self-portrait or as we know them today, a selfie.
Experimenting with light, many early photographers took accidental selfies with their shadow or figure appearing in the frame of the shot by mistake. This picture of the famous Apache warrior Geronimo from 1904 shows a reflection of the photographer in the eye of the famous Indian chief.
Bored posh teenage selfie, 1914
By the times this image was taken by teenage Russian princess Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova in 1914, photography had taken off in a big way among the upper and middle classes. In the 1880s companies like Kodak invented mass-produced affordable cameras that allowed for multiple copies to be made of images on 35mm film.
“A hundred years before, you had to pay to have someone to paint your portrait, so you had to be someone of means,” Ms Gilmour said.
For women in Western societies where voting rights and working outside the home were also new, photography was a particularly powerful tool. Portraits went from being largely male status symbols of power to a medium which women could use to document their own lives.
“For women in particular there was a real gender dimension to it (amateur portrait photography) because you didn’t have to go to the royal academy to know how to do it, it was more something the average women could do,” Ms Gilmour said.
Several years before the Grand Duchess met with her bloody fate in the Russian Revolution, this teenage princess was one of millions of young women to embrace photography. The keen young photographer kept her images in scrapbooks which have since provided an intimate record of life for the last Romanovs.
This image thought to be taken in 1914 is one of the earliest known selfies shot by a teenager, foreshadowing a trend that remains popular today.
Experimental selfies
At the turn of the twentieth century, seflies like this one taken by a woman in 1900 were among millions by amateur photographers all over the world.
But unlike today when people take and share images instantly with the world, many first generation selfies were most likely taken by snappers experimenting with their new cameras who had to wait to see how their images would turn out.
Most like this bloke just wanted to know what kind of pictures they could capture with their new tech toys.
Kodak’s slogan with the first generation of cameras it produced in the early 1900s was “you push the button, we do the rest”. This meant amateur photographers didn’t need expensive dark room equipment, but they did have to wait until the company developed their images to see what they had created.
Artists
For established artists photography was an entirely new medium for self-expression.
Harold Cazneau, who took this selfie in 1910, was an early adopter and one of the first artists in Australia to full explore the use of photography as an artistic medium.
“Portraiture was Cazneaux bread and butter and he was one of the pioneers of portrait photography in Australia,” Ms Gilmour said.
“He takes himself quite seriously in this image and makes an effort to capture himself and something about himself,” she added.
Cazneaux considered himself a pictorial photographer and used images like this to argue that photography was just as capable of expressing something about the sitter and the times as other more established mediums like painting.
Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel who took this selfie in 1898 was another artist who experimented with selfies as a form of serious artistic expression.
Artistic self-portraits paintings which have been around for centuries, were early incarnations of the selfie, but we’re willing to bet no bored teen ever had the patience to create one.
Troops
For the millions of men who put on uniforms and went off to fight in trenches in World War I, photographs took on a new meaning. “Commercial studios did really well out of soldiers with thousands of guys signing up and not knowing if they were going to come home having their picture taken,” Ms Gilmour said. Many a young trooper wanted an image taken in uniform to give to loved ones.
For Diggers like Trooper George Simpson Millar, who took this selfie while shaving one morning in Egypt in 1915, his selfie was probably more a personal memento of his time at a light horse training camp before the Gallipoli offensive. He returned home to Australia in 1918.
Selfies today
Selfies today are much cheaper and more convenient to create than these first-generation images.
But in years to come, they too could be considered important historical documents so while we may laugh at Miley’s risque selfies or enjoy Miranda Kerr’s picture stream, if these images survive, they could also tell future generations much about life today.
So selfies like this one of the Pope will be able to give future generations a much better insight into what life was really like for people today.
“Try to imagine that in one hundred or two hundred years down the track if these selfie images survive they could have value. Certainly they would have documentary and historic value in the future,” she said.
This article originally appeared on News.com.au.