Historians are in disagreement as to when or where this plague/virus first broke out, although some prefer to call it a culture phenomenon-historians prefer to call it a virus. Each passing hour eats away at our digital memory-chunk by chunk. The majority of these learned men and women point to America (always the villain) but not necessarily by an American-someone just visiting-just passing through. It seems there is a giant need of the self or “Selfie”, first we photographed our food, cars, kittens, dogs and where we went on vacation-but all of the above are pale in comparison to the self portrait or “Selfie”. Americans now take over ninety million Selfies a day, by comparison the painter Rembrandt did about sixty self portraits in his lifetime, actors do more than that before they get out of bed and the photographer Cindy Sherman has photographed herself for the past thirty years or more-curious behavior indeed-but it’s art, all in the name of art.
Lolla
Before you go to any social event, don’t worry about your Tux, car keys, keys to the house, take your medicine-no, make sure your iPhone is charged and your Selfie Stick is hung correctly, it looks a little cheesy when you try to pass it off as an erection, although that too makes for a great Selfie and men have been known to do it and send it to there co-workers. That is the new uniform; this bug has bitten everyone-from Heads of State to the Pope, children and dogs. Yes, we humans pass on our knowledge to dogs instead of “Fetch it Rex” it’s now; “…press here Rex”. The videos and Selfies of Miley Cyrus and her dog Emu taking a bath are silly at best, but they take the craft of photography to yet another level. Not to be left out of the picture is an eleven year old girl does some nudes of herself and sends them to her classmates or the sixteen year old boy poses with a man he just killed-guess how the Police cracked this case? A Selfie. CNN the news network (?) now has an online editorial titled no other than; “..Selfie of the Week”, where do we go from here?
Lolla at home.
When Ellen DeGeneres took that Selfie at the Oscars, no one-not even Ellen thought it would spin out of control or currently be worth one million dollars-that's way more than most photographers ever make in a lifetime-and they have talent. So this celebrity driven image, soaked in oil is worth a cool million-not a good future for the shutterbugs. As for Hiroshi Ueda who first designed the Selfie stick in 1983, although he thought he had a hit-it was a dud. Years later when cellphones put “Point n’ Shoot” cameras out of business would the Selfie stick return in Pink, Aqua Blue, Silver, Green, Orange, Yellow and Black retailing for as little as $40.00 and less, people are snapping them up like hot donuts. Pink and Aqua Blue are the hot colors this season, Silver for those on a more modest family budget. New York first banned the Selfie stick in Museums for several reasons that act was followed by both a national and international ban, followed by The Cannes Film Festival and Disney World-but you can’t hold down a good movement. Recently while returning to New York from San Antonio I watched a young man watch the luggage carousel and at the moment his luggage came up, he took a Selfie. A self-portrait of himself and suitcase, now that's a lot to digest. JPN