Selfies have a bad reputation. Selfies (and those who take them) are vilified for being vain or insecure. I admit, selfies aren't my favorite thing to come across my Instagram feed. I'm not on Instagram to see an endless stream of selfies of all of the people I follow [although I do love putting a face to the artist!]. I'm on there to see their work, their art, their passions lived out in their gardening, baking, photography, travel, etc. It inspires me in how I live my life and create my own art.
But it's disingenuous to suggest that selfies are only bad. As one who lives 2,000-2,700 miles away from most of the people I love the very best, selfies are a great help in easing the weight of that distance. Selfies most certainly have a special place in personal photographic documentation and exchange.
I grew up in a snap-happy family and got the bug for photography at a pretty early age, snapping away with my primary colored kid-Kodak camera. Standard practice in our family involved everyone posing for the camera while the photographer (usually mom) was omitted from the frame. With my parents leading a quieter life these days without growing kids and family gatherings to warrant pulling out the camera all the time, photos of them just weren't happening, which left me lonely for their faces.
On a trip home a few years ago, I laid it all out for my parents and explained what a selfie is, how to take them, and why they are necessary for our relationship. I promised them a 1 to 1 exchange rate of selfie per selfie. Now whenever I am missing their faces, I just send a selfie and wait for one to come back my way. It's the very best. It applies to anyone you live far away from and miss: siblings, best friends. It's such a boost to the spirit to see a smiling (or funny!) face of a very favorite person show up in a text exchange.
Now that I find myself well-established in my own family, which consists of two adult humans and one small dog, selfies are a lifesaver. Sure, the humans of the house swap turns taking photos of each other with and without the dog, but when you are home alone sharing a quiet moment with your favorite furry friend and want to capture that, or when you're out adventuring on the hiking trail and want pics of you together, the selfie saves the day. We use both selfies and tripods to get pictures of the two (or three) of us, because we want to look back on them and remember those times and see ourselves together, and not with half of our duo unseen behind the camera.
In a small family such as ours, that's what it takes to get everyone together in one shot. In a spread-out extended family such as ours, that's what it takes to share faces and experiences across the country. It's not vain or insecure, it's a way of creating community and sharing life. My mom always had duplicates printed when she took her film to be processed, because she knew that the grandparents would want copies too. Now I also share copies of our photos with our family and friends. Just because we have to pose them ourselves with a long arm or a tripod doesn't make them any less valid or lovely.
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Some of my favorite selfies of all time are with my little brother or my mom. But I have a strict privacy policy regarding other people's lives, so the following favorites disproportionally represent my selfie collection. In general the collection includes lots of me with my partner in life, with my beloved pup, with my very favorite humans [not pictured], with animals I meet, and the singles of myself that I send in selfie-exchanges to my top 5 favorite humans in the whole world.
