“自拍”何以变成社会流行病

    和许多社会变革一样，自拍的兴起也始于科技的变革。在20世纪的大部分时间里，照相都是一件非常昂贵的事情。要想看到定格在相片上的瞬间，必须经历漫长的等待。业余摄影师们必须得购买好多卷胶卷，拍完后要把胶卷送到暗房里冲洗。在90年代末期，数码相机使得拍照变得更加经济，不论拍照、回看还是删除图像都非常方便。随后，宽带网络取代拨号网络走进千家万户，使人们拥有了更快速的网络体验。第一个主流社交网络开始走红。MySpace使“爆照”流行起来。到2004年，“自拍”标签开始在Flickr上出现。

   2007年，史蒂夫•乔布斯推出iPhone。有史以来，我们第一次可以把照相机放在我们的口袋里。照片的拍摄和分享变得容易无比，你既可以通过短消息和电子邮件指定发给某个人，也可以把它上传到社交网络。到了2010年，就在Skype和苹果的Facetime开始支持视频聊天服务的同时，苹果发布了带前置摄像头的iPhone 4，苹果的用户们开始拍摄自己的照片。

    要想明白为什么，大家不妨想想这些工具是如何改变照相本身的。它们创造了海量相片。根据玛丽•米克的《2014互联网趋势报告》，5年前，我们每天在网络上分享的照片大约在5000万张左右，其中大部分照片被上传到Facebook上。如今，我们每天分享的照片多达18亿张。就像我最近在为《财富》撰写的《图像的未来》（the Future of the Image）系列文章中所说的那样，照片已经具有了“用完即弃”的特点。就像书写语言一样，它们被拼凑起来，成了交流的工具。

    自拍在当代已经成了表达信息的一种完美载体——毕竟面部表情是语言交流的一个最重要的部分。比如去年12月，一架载有费迪南德•普恩特斯等8人的小飞机在夏威夷沿岸坠毁。普恩特斯掉进海中的第一件事，竟然是翻出他的GoPro相机，自拍了一张他在海中半浮半沉的照片，飞机已经完全扎入海中，只有机尾还露在外面。这位“淡定帝”的照片相当于一种宣言：“我在这儿，当时的感觉就是这样的。”

    自拍的流行还带来了另外一些福利。去年一批新型图像应用为照片分享提供了更短期的载体。其中最有代表性的就是“阅后即焚”的Snapchat，用户互发图片后，在对方看到的10秒钟后就会自动消失。Snapchat的用户大部分都是十几岁的青少年，目前他们上传的照片超过7亿张。

    当然，这个词自身或许只是一时的狂热。再过几年往回看，如今很流行的斜上45度角、嘟嘴剪刀手之类的自拍造型，可能跟我们看高腰裤、垫肩这种东西一样觉得过时了——当然也包括那些我们用来拍照和分享照片的工具。摄像头会被安装到眼镜、手表、汽车甚至是任何你能想象得到的东西里。Snapchat和Instagram可能会被Whatsapp和微信(Wechat)取代。但是捕捉自己的影像作为沟通方式的做法还会延续下去。评论人苏珊•桑塔格在她1977年的作品《论摄影》（On Photography）中写道：“人们有照相的冲动没什么错，因为可以把经历变成一种视觉。今天所有东西的存在，都是为了被装进照片里。”既是所有东西，也包括所有人。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

     Like so many social changes, the rise of the selfie begins with a shift in technology. For most of the twentieth century, photography was expensive and the gratification of capturing a moment was subject to lengthy delay. That was back when amateur photographers purchased roles of film, and sent those roles to labs for processing. In the late ’90s, digital cameras changed the economics of photography, making it easy to click, review and erase images. Then broadband replaced dial-up Internet service in homes, allowing people a faster online experience. The first mainstream social networks began to take off. MySpace popularized the profile pic, and by 2004, images tagged #selfie began to appear on Flickr.

   In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone; for the first time, we began carrying cameras around in our pockets. Pictures were easily snapped and shared, either privately by text message and email, or by uploading them to social networks. Then in 2010, in an effort to support video chatting services like Skype and Apple’s own Facetime, Apple released a new version of the iPhone 4 with a front-facing camera. Apple’s users began snapping photos of themselves.

    To understand why, consider how these tools have changed the nature of the photograph itself. They’ve created an abundance of images. Five years ago, we shared somewhere close to 50 million photos daily, mostly on Facebook, according to Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends Report. Today, we share 1.8 billion photos daily. As I recently wrote in the opening to my series of the Future of the Image, photos have taken on a disposable quality. Much like written language, they are pieced together and used to communicate.

    The modern selfie is the perfect vehicle for a message—facial expression, after all, is the most critical element to verbal communication. In December, for example, when the small plane carrying Ferdinand Puentes and eight others crashed into the sea off the coast of Hawaii, Puentes flipped on his GoPro camera, and as he bobbed in the water, captured a photo of himself as the tail of the plane rose out of the sea above his right shoulder. Terror screamed across his eyebrows, his photo announcing, “I was here, and this is how it felt.”

    Another boon for the selfie explosion: In the past year, an emerging group of apps have offered more temporary vehicles for photo-sharing. The most popular is Snapchat, the disappearing photo app that lets its users—mostly teens—send photos to each other, setting a timer for them so that they (ostensibly) disappear in less than ten seconds. Snapchat users, who are mostly teens, currently upload more than 700 million photos to the service each day.

    To be sure, the word itself is a bit of a fad. Like high-rise jeans and shoulder pads, this early form of the genre—camera positioned 45 degrees above our heads, pouty lips, the hint of an outstretched arm in the foreground—may look as dated to our future selves as the tools we use to take and share them. Cameras will creep into glasses, watches, cars, and just about everything else you can imagine. Snapchat and Instagram may give way to Whatsapp and Wechat. But the act of capturing ourselves visually as a way to communicate will only grow. “It would not be wrong to speak of people having a compulsion to photograph: to turn experience itself into a way of seeing,” wrote the critic Susan Sontag in her seminal 1977 work, On Photography, adding, “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” Everything, and also, everyone.