I have a friend who laughs at me for taking so many selfies. He says it’s a ‘girlie’ thing to do. He doesn’t know how much this offends me. But I take it in stride.

Artists can never take or have too many selfies. It’s kind of in the spirit of being an artist. It’s just that tech has changed the concept and idea of what a selfie is.

For an artist, a selfie is a study. Whether that is the tracking or passing of time (aging), or of light and shadow, or needing a face or body to study while not involving other people in the day to day of making art, it’s a study.

Artists have been making selfies since the beginning of time. The earliest form of a selfie is a handprint made in cave wall art. As cave people we never saw our reflections, we didn’t know what we looked like. The closest thing to making a self portrait was making a handprint.

All of the famous artists have sat themselves down in front of a mirror and painted themselves. It sure beats paying for a model when you can’t afford one, or just want to work and no one else is around. Doing self portraits also gives the artist time to work without interruption.

Many artists have inserted their own likenesses into larger works. Michelangelo added himself, twice, to The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Rembrandt also peeks around from behind a few of his characters, like in The Night Watch or Prodigal Son. Van Gogh is famous for his self portraits. Learning to draw our own faces, or hands, feet or other body parts, is a way of practicing and preparing for drawing and painting others.

Since the invention of photography, photographers have been inserting themselves into photographs. The history of photography is full of those self portraits images taken in the mirror with their camera in full view, if not as the actual subject of the image. With film photography, taking self portraits was much more of a production and an expense – so one had to hit it on the first or second try.

In the present day, we have been offered the speed and affordability of the phone digital camera, or small point and shoot cameras. We have morphed from a study of self or the study of the portrait, into a ‘selfie’ culture. It’s not just something that artists do now. Now it is for everyone. Some people take their selfies seriously, others take them as life notes, others are totally random. Some are quick captures, others are well thought out. The difference now is that everyone has access to some sort of camera to make them.

I tend to make selfies as part of the record keeping of my own life – the day-to-day stuff, with objects I like or cherish, the documentation of physical changes, for use as avatars, the every ten-year passport photos, the travels, the friends that stop by …

I personally think that you can’t have too many selfies.