SLEEP ELSEWHERE | Selfies | Booklet | pages 48 | Size 148mm x 210mm

What does it mean to live in a room?
Is it to live in a place to take possession of it?
What does taking possession of a place mean?
As from when does somewhere become truly yours?

From Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Penguin Books, 1999) Originally published as Espèces d’espaces (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1974)

ABOUT SELFIES

Robert Cornelius, an American pioneer in photography, produced a daguerreotype of himself in 1839 which is also one of the first photographs of a person. Because the process was slow he was able to uncover the lens, run into shot for a minute or more, and then replace the lens cap. He recorded on the back “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”[1][2]

Early Edwardian woman taking her picture in a mirror roughly 1900

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia taking one of the first teenage self-portraits. The debut of the portable Kodak Brownie box camera in 1900 led to photographic self-portraiture becoming a more widespread technique.
The method was usually by mirror and stabilizing the camera either on a nearby object or on a tripod while framing via a viewfinder at the top of the box.[3] Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna at the age of 13 was one of the first teenagers to take her own picture using a mirror to send to a
friend in 1914. In the letter that accompanied the photograph, she wrote, “I took this picture of myself looking at the mirror. It was very hard as my hands were trembling.”[4]

The concept of uploading group self-taken photographs (now known as super selfies) to the internet, although with a disposable camera not a smartphone, dates to a webpage created by Australians in September 2001, including photos taken in the late 1990s (captured by the Internet Archive in April
2004).[5][6][7] The earliest usage of the word selfie can be traced as far back as 2002. It first appeared in an Australian internet forum (ABC Online) on 13 September 2002.

Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped over [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie. [8] (Wikipedia)