Sometimes I like to take pictures for my player model, so I will turn my model to a front view and fix like this.
I made it by holding down the right click, turning the model and then scrolling the mouse wheel, then the view is fixed.
What you were using to “fix” the front was a camera bug, who made several people (including me), be locked in the character position, unable to turn the character around.
If I’m correct, It was fixed in the 0.8.8 update. You can still hold your mouse in place to continue doing that.