Selfie indulgence: The meaning of photos in the age of social mediaA picture was once worth a thousand words, but now you'd be lucky to find one in the penny candy bin.
The first partially successful photograph was taken in 1816. Back then, as you've probably seen in period films and super old photos, the camera was a rather large and cumbersome contraption. Getting your photo taken was expensive and a novelty. The first roll of film was patented some 65 years later. The first Kodak camera went on sale in 1888.
From then until the early 2000s (yeah, like 120 years), photographs became a way of freezing memories so that we could make them last forever. We'd put them in albums, frame them, and slap our kids' hands when they'd get fingerprints on the glossy paper.
But the photograph has taken on an entirely new meaning with the advent of social media. For one, "graph" is long gone from the word. With digitization has come convenience beyond our wildest dreams.
With convenience has come a sharp decline in value.
The way we were
I grew up in the 90s...
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Selfie indulgence: The meaning of photos in the age of social media
