● Selfie generation

Auckland Museum curator of pictorial: ‘The selfie is a present-day photography phenomenon that can’t be overlooked’

Those smartphone vanity snaps, blazoned across social media, and embraced by celebrities everywhere — selfies — are taking their place in the permanent archives of Auckland Museum.

In September, a callout was made to everyday Aucklanders to submit a selfie before settings that capture a sentimental patch of “their Auckland”.

This week, Auckland War Memorial Museum is officially “immortalising” roughly 900 of these Auckland selfies into its permanent photo collection — which holds over three million photos dating back to the 1900s.

Auckland Museum curator of pictorial Shaun Higgins said he has been wanting to collect selfies ever since they exploded into popular youth culture at the start of the 21st century.

“The concept [of the museum selfie collection] was really open, and the idea was that you submit selfies that you’ve taken in Auckland in places that mean something to you,” Higgins said.

“It can be anything from the local fish and chip shop or your favourite mountain.”

A sample of the collection set to be recorded in the museum capture backdrops such as Silo Park, atop the Harbour Bridge mid-run in the Auckland marathon, a helicopter overlooking the cityscape and a shot of a group of people with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, right down to humble shots of a family packed into a car on the way to the zoo. S

elfie culture became popular in Japan and then other East Asian countries in the 1990s with photo sticker booths. But the practice dates back decades and spans memorable selfie moments such as astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s spacewalk snap in 1966 on the Gemini 12 mission.

The first known use of the word “selfie” in any paper or electronic medium allegedly appeared on September 13, 2002, in an Australian internet forum.

The emergence of social-media platforms MySpace and Facebook in the 2000’s led to the explosion of selfies.

A simple search of the #selfie hashtag on Instagram today yields no fewer than 409,376,497 images.

Social media behemoth Kim Kardashian, who with her famous sisters is known for

Keeping Up with the Kardashians, retains 151 million followers on Instagram and released a coffee table book of selfies in 2015 called Selfish.

For Higgins, the obvious appeal of selfies is how easy they are to capture and share.

“The whole definition of the selfie is you’ve taken the picture with your arm or a selfie stick and you’re in the picture,” he says.

“I think it’s exploded more into popular youth culture as devices have come to them. So a decade ago people would have probably been not too familiar with a phone with a front facing camera.

“The selfie is a present-day photography phenomenon that can’t be overlooked.”

A handful of the museum’s selfie collection will also appear in the Museum’s Ta¯ maki Stories gallery which opens in 2020.

The concept was really open, and the idea was that you submit selfies that you’ve taken in Auckland in places that mean something to you.