Ellen DeGeneres did it at the Oscars and the Kardashian sisters do it nearly on a daily basis: Selfies.
These are examples of taking selfies to extremes. But our fascination with these self-portraits is nothing new. A current exhibit of 17th-century Dutch painters at the Mauritshuis museum in the Netherlands is billed as “Dutch Self-Portraits: Selfies of the Golden Age.”
And whether capturing faces on film or canvas, the “selfie craze” is not limited to humans. A story rocking the art world for the past few months centers around a monkey who took his own photo with a camera left unattended by a zoo photographer. This “monkey selfie” has started a debate about selfie photo ownership, copyright law and animal rights.
To learn more about art, self-portraits and copyright law, check out our suite of Art subject resources, which include full-text databases, e-book collections and digital archives.
