A “selfie” is a self-portrait photograph, usually captured with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. Selfies are frequently posted on social networking sites like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Tumblr. They are usually random, and are commonly taken either with a camera held at arm’s length or a monopod, or in a mirror. The term “selfie” was explained by photographer Jim Krause in 2005, despite photos in the selfie type predate the extensive application of the word. Self –taken pictures were specifically common on MySpace before Facebook became popular online social network in the beginning of the year 2000. Nevertheless, writer Kate Losse depicts that between 2006 and 2009 (when Facebook became well-known than MySpace) the “MySpace pic” (mainly “an incompetent, flash-blinded self-portrait, regularly taken in front of a bathroom mirror”) became a hint of a bad taste for users of the newer Instagram and Facebook social network.

A “self-portrait” is a description of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Even though self-portraits have been built by artists since the earliest times, it is not before the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century that artists can be commonly recognized representing themselves as either the primary subject or as important characters in their work with greater and cheaper mirrors and the approach of panel portrait, many painters, sculptors, and printmakers attempt some form of self-portraiture. The earliest known panel self-portrait was the “Portrait of a Man in a Turban” by Jan Van Eych of 1433. He painted a separate portrait of his wife, and he belonged to the social group that had started to Commission portraits, already more casual among rich Netherlanders than South of Alps. The genre is dignified, but not until the Renaissance, with additional wealth and interest in the character as a subject, did it alter to truly well-liked. According to Galina Vasilyeva-Shlyapina, an art critic, there are two fundamental forms of self-portrait: (1) professional portraits, in which the artist is described at work, and (2) personal portraits, which tell moral and psychological characteristics.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/self-portrait
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/selfie