Many people live their lives through the rear-facing camera, tossing their head to find the perfect angle while missing life on the other side of the lens.

But is the selfie even a recent phenomenon?

An exhibition at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale will explore the selfie craze and compare it to historical snaps that artists took of themselves.

“The theme of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale is performance of identity through photographs … and selfies exemplify this,” said BIFB director Fiona Sweet.

“I wonder if we have always been self-obsessed but never had the ability to do selfies as we have now?

“In the past, cameras were expensive, only specialists had them, or a family might have had one camera with film … but as soon as cameras moved in phones that’s when we started doing what we want to do.”

The exhibition poses questions about the selfie culture rather than providing answers.

Self/Selfie will contrast Instagram selfie personalities, chosen for their style, fan base and obsession with self, with photographs from artists including Julie Rrap, Cindy Sherman, Aleks Danko, and Elizabeth Gower.

A photo booth will also be installed at the exhibition in the Backspace Gallery, with visitors able to take their own selfies and either keep the photos or add them to a changing artwork that will grow throughout the month-long festival.

Psychologist Meredith Fuller said selfies were now ingrained in our psyche.

“There’s a couple of observations: one of them is we could be forgiven for being concerned about rampant narcissism on one end of the extreme, and then on the other end it’s like something that says I exist, I’m visible in a world that’s increasingly turning us in to automatons.”

But Ms Fuller raised concerns that we are so busy looking at self that we have lost our capacity for empathy and looking at others.

“A real issue, which I saw overseas, is that at the great museums all I could see were people with their selfie sticks all taking pictures of themselves in front of the art and not one person looking at the art, which is a metaphor for what’s happening elsewhere.”

She also feared the quest for the perfect selfie presented a false image to the world.

“Selfies present a perfect face to the world but hide so much. I suspect that behind the child-like perfect happy smile we are shutting away all the stuff we feel: being out of control, pain, hurt, depression anxiety.”

The Ballarat International Foto Biennale runs from August 19 to September 17.