Karl Baden: An Evolving Retrospective
Artist statement: Every Day (1987-ongoing)
Since February 23rd, 1987, I have, each day, made a photograph of my face. Reserved exclusively for this project are a single camera, tripod, cable release, strobe and white backdrop. A small, additional tripod and backdrop allow me to take the setup with me when I travel.
The procedure itself is simple and straightforward, usually taking between five and ten minutes to accomplish (a bit longer when Im on the road): The camera is always set at the same distance. I try to center myself in the frame, maintain a neutral expression and look straight into the lens.
It is vital that each days image be no more and no less than a visual record, a facsimile of its subject. I consciously avoid Beauty. Dynamic composition, odd framing, unusual lighting, etc, only serve to obscure. In essence, my attempt has been to standardize the technical and logistic aspects of this procedure to the extent that only one variable remains: Whatever change may occur in my face, measured obsessively and incrementally, day after day, for the rest of my life.
The nature of Every Day presumes it be a work in progress. Its presentation may vary widely, depending on space and circumstance. As much as sameness is important in the making of each image, difference becomes an issue when the these images are exhibited as a body of work. So far, my intent has been to change the way the work is shown, to reconfigure the interface, as it were, for each new venue.
Presented here are installation views, entire or in part, of the Every Day series presented in a variety of exhibition spaces over the years.
Artist statement: A Hair above Normal (2007)
These inkjet prints are from the series A Hair above Normal, a document of my year of treatment for prostate cancer. Each image contains the raw material of photographs, scans of ephemera from my treatments, and transcribed text from journal entries or recorded conversations with medical practitioners and family members.
Artist statement: The Kid (1994-1996)
Liz and I became first-time parents as we entered middle age. Our daughter was born three weeks after Lizs 39th birthday and four days short of my 42nd. Our decision to have a child was the result of four years filled with discussion, negotiation, second guessing, threat and counterthreat, outright battling and, finally, agreement. We would both take this journey, Liz reassured me; the distant glow of our destination was sunshine and not the headlight of an oncoming train.
These are page reproductions, excerpted from The Kid an unpublished, unabashedly biased and self-involved chronicle describing how we allowed our lives to change in a way that is at once commonplace and extraordinary.
All text in The Kid is from my journal entries. The tale is told in my voice and seen through my eyes. I make no claim to objectivity. Hope and fear go hand and hand.
Artist statement: In Our House (1994)
These pictures are part of a visual chronicle of the beginning our life as a family. They were all made inside our house. We dont get out as much as we used to.
Artist statement: Cliché-Verre Self-Portraits (1982)
The Cliché-Verre series (1982-83) was an attempt to combine handwork and drawing with photographic imagery and still produce roughly identical multiples of an image.
The prints, split-toned in selenium, were made from negatives which had been variously scratched, inked, burned, cut up and glued onto other negatives.
Artist statement: Some Significant Self-Portraits (1981)
Some Significant Self-Portraits was a small, cheap artists book self-published in 1981 (Badger Press). Offset-printed in an edition of approximately 220, it was a gathering of 14 or 15 of my personal favorite images from the history of photography, into each of which I collaged a picture of myself. The cover uses the photo of George Eastman from the 1964 edition of Beaumont Newhalls History of Photography; the text that photographers of my generation grew up on.
Artist statement: Contact Sheet Self-Portrait Text (1980)
About 50 contact sheet self-portraits were made over a three-month period in 1980. For each, a roll of 35 exposures was taken of various parts of my body, usually in close-up. The roll was processed normally and printed, without alteration or manipulation, as a contact sheet.
This work was originally supposed to be enlarged, but, due to one thing or another, it took more than a decade before even a few of them were printed approximately 64x42 inches.
Artist statement: Self-Image series (1978-1979)
The Self-Image series was done in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, from the Fall of 1978 to the Fall of 1979. The nominal subject of the photographs is me, or parts of me. My aim, aside from making a visually arresting image, was to psychologically imply a sense of transformation; from inorganic to organic, animal to human, male to female. I wanted to stretch the traditional notion of a figure in a landscape.
From a technical standpoint, the photographs were made using a 35mm SLR camera with a detachable prism, allowing me to stand in front of the lens and see fairly accurately what the camera saw. I also employed simple lens elements, held between myself and the camera, to throw areas of the image in or out of focus, and create incongruities in the depth-of-field. Usually, the negative was only exposed once, but, occasionally, two or three exposures were made in the camera, There was no print manipulation other than standard burning and dodging.
At the time, I would have denied that the work had any personal psychological dimension, and insisted that I used myself as the subject because I was unable to afford a model. In retrospect, I realize that stance was ridiculous. I now have no doubt that the relationship between humor and horror informed my own psyche in this and a number of previous and subsequent bodies of work.
