They’re on Instagram, pop up on Facebook, get pasted onto Twitter — is there is no stopping the self-portrait craze, which has caught fire throughout the world?
If you snooze you lose, so why not join in the fun? Far from making us narcissistic and leading us perilously towards the downfall of today’s society as some learned periodicals state, family selfies can be the most memorable snaps of the whole family together, recording a special time that could well be forgotten had that mobile device not been at hand.
Selfies are defined as photographs “one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”, according to a press release issued by Oxford Dictionaries, which added this word to its vast library in August last year. By November, it was named its Word of the Year 2013 as the frequency of the word selfie had “increased by 17,000 per cent since this time last year”.
Dubai’s malls and shopping centres have a dearth of features offering photo opportunities. It’s tricky to capture both background and family into the frame while holding a camera (and sometimes a child too), though some interesting perspectives arise in unexpected places.
