Oxford Dictionaries named “selfie” the word of the year 2013 after the frequency of its usage increased by 17,000 per cent over the previous 12 months.
The English dictionary defines a selfie as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”
Contemporary use of the word has been traced to a post on an Australian online forum on Sept. 12, 2002 although the concept itself is far from a modern phenomenon. The hashtag #selfie first appeared on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn’t widespread until at least 2012.
The ubiquitous use of smartphones has made selfies the most democratic of art forms.
Click on the photo carousel above to see the individual photos.
To see more photos, the selfies that were taken, and a couple of "photobombs," check out the photo gallery by clicking here.
