Most often, selfies are the product of a spontaneous intuition, feeling, or idea, which distinguishes them not only from painted self-portraits but also from professional portrait photography that usually follows a complex set of established compositional principles ( Bruno et al., 2014), such as the principle of eye centering ( Tyler, 1998), for example. Compositional factors do not seem to be taken into account, and a special preparation is not required. Selfies, in contrast, are produced (i.e., taken) within seconds, usually by means of the deficient add-on camera of a smartphone equipped with a strongly distorting lens and under suboptimal lighting conditions. Apparently, the effort invested in a self-portrait is quite high, and the same is true for the monetary costs, as the used materials (color pigments, large canvases, or wooden panels) are typically quite expensive. Finally, this historic perspective leads us to the insight that self-portraits as well as selfies are both referring to nothing less than the “conditio humana.”Ĭomparing contemporary selfies and historic self-portraits such as Dürer's Renaissance masterpiece from 1500, we first of all notice a number of clear differences, among them concerning the production process, the medium itself and typical compositions: Self-portrait paintings are created following a sophisticated plan or concept demanding a serial production process ranging from composition and preliminary sketches to colorization and final varnish. The article provides an overview of the types of contemporary photographic selfies and compares them with painted self-portraits. Putting the contemporary selfie into this historic context covering more than five centuries of cultural development from Dürer's (1500) famous “Self-Portrait at 28” (also known as “Selbstbildnis im Pelzrock”) to today's Instagram galleries allows for identifying central parallels concerning the technical and social antecedents as well as common underlying psychological factors and shared properties of different kinds of self-depiction.

Western culture, however, has been highly familiar with self-depictions since the Renaissance days. Selfie-photography is generally thought of as a cultural mass phenomenon of the early 21st century, inseparably related to the development and triumph of the smartphone with integrated camera. 3Research Group Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt, Bamberg, Germany.

2Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences, Bamberg, Germany.

1Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany.

Self-portraiture