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Emily Kinney as Nurse Daisy Ryan in ‘The Knick’ Season 2 Episode 5 Whiplash

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Ambitions - Chirping.

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1913: Duchess Anastasia Takes a Selfie

Selfies, selfies, everywhere: in our Facebook feeds, in our news reports, in our dictionaries. But what do these tech-enabled self portraits say about their subjects? And, indeed: What do they say about us? Are they, as their names might suggest, symptoms of narcissism? Are they empowering? Are they a cry for help? 

They are probably, on some level, all of those things—in addition to being just, you know, playful pictures. But here’s another thing about selfies: They are not new. Selfies, contemporary anxieties about them notwithstanding, are very, very old.  

The latest reminder of this (which is also an appropriately aged reminder of this): the selfie above. Which was, apparently, snapped by the Grand Duchess Anastasia (yep, that Anastasia) in 1913, when she was a teenager. The youngest daughter of Russia’s last czar is using the wildly popular camera of her time—the Kodak brownie, released in 1900—and a mirror to capture her own likeness. She is gazing at herself. She is looking at herself. She looks, to me, a little bit curious. And a little bit excited. And a little bit scared.

Read more. [Image: Retronaut]

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This man is disguised.

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