Historical selfies – Buzz Aldrin, Stanley Kubrick and the Russian princess
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Version 0 of 1. He might have got to the moon second, but this weekend Buzz Aldrin laid claim to a first of his own: the first space selfie – in the form of a photo he released of himself orbiting the earth in 1966. He was supposed to be photographing ultraviolet light from stars, but instead Aldrin seems to be thinking: "Won't this look great when they invent Twitter in 40 years' time?" Aldrin's snap is a reminder that not only have selfies existed long before the word, but they were considerably harder back in the days before you could simply hold up your mobile, get your Cara Delevingne impression just right and hit the button (and repeat the process ad infinitum until you got something Instagram-worthy). In earlier times, it took a certain blend of curiosity, technical expertise and narcissism to create a selfie for the ages. Aldrin had it (you can make certain allowances for the heavy shadows, considering the camera was fixed to a spaceship), and it's no surprise that the "pre-selfie" appealed to many 20th-century painters (a damned sight easier than doing a Rembrandt) and photographers (recent doc Finding Vivian Maier reveals the secretive photographer to be the undiscovered queen of the selfie). But more interesting are the amateurs and dilettantes. There's a spectral eeriness to Grand Duchess Anastasia's selfie, from 1914, for example. It prefigures not just the Russian heiress's own execution four years later, but also the self-regarding, slightly hesitant teenage bedroom shot of today's social media. Likewise, Colin Powell's 1950s mirror shot captures a confident-looking young man with little idea of his own destiny. "I was doing selfies 60 years before you Facebook folks," said Powell, when he put up the image this March (on his Facebook page). Hunter S Thompson's offhand self-portrait aged 22 speaks volumes about the writer, while other celebrity proponents clearly took more care, such as John Lennon (sporting his "I Still Love The Beatles" badge in 1967), and Allen Ginsberg, who produced a series of ingenious compositions, including a "naked meditation selfie" – surely that's a hashtag waiting to happen? |