For 20 years, photographer had a daily obsession: himself
Changes marked in 7,305 images
"How'd you know it was me?" Karl Baden asked.
It was a rhetorical question.
Baden had just stepped into the Howard Yezerski Gallery , on Newbury Street, where his photographic exhibition, "Every Day: 2/23/87-2/23/07, Twenty Years -- Ten Bucks," runs through May 29. There were roughly 7,000 Baden self-portraits hanging on the walls, a mosaic of me's. Granted, they are small self-portraits, contact-print size, about 1.2 inches by 1.7 inches -- but still.
For the past 20 years and counting, day in and day out, Baden has been taking his own picture. He cheerfully described himself as "somewhat obsessed by obsession," and he sees this particular obsession as being a window on the nature of making art as well as the ravages of time.
"Takes about five minutes," he said. "When I travel, it takes maybe 15. I have a portable set up. I have one camera reserved for it, one kind of film, one strobe I carry with me, and a small tripod and a portable backdrop."
Baden is not alone as a serial self-portraitist. Thanks to such user-friendly technology as digital cameras and camcorders, and the popularity of such websites as YouTube and Flickr , the practice has gained an increasingly high profile. Like blogs, the sites function as a record of one's existence, except they are visual rather than verbal and concerned with physical appearance rather than personal opinion.
Photographer Noah Kalina's 6-minute film, "Everyday: Noah Kalina Takes a Photo of Himself Every Day for 6 Years," has been viewed about 6 million times on YouTube. "Everyday" has spawned numerous imitators, as has graphic designer Ahree Lee's film "Me," which comprises three years' of self-portraits shown in three minutes. Part of the appeal of watching them is the way they combine the sci-fi spookiness of rapid-fire shape-shifting with the irresistibly illicit attraction of watching someone else looking into a mirror.
For Baden, "The idea, basically, is to take all the variables, except one [the passage of time], and turn them into constants," he said. "I try not to change physically. I don't grow a mustache or beard. I pretty much cut my hair the same way."
The most startling thing about his appearance over the course of two decades is how relatively little it's changed. There's the inevitable wrinkling, though not that much, and his hairline creeps slightly rearward. That's about it.
Obsessiveness has been a hallmark of his work, whether chronicling his wife's pregnancy in minute detail or recording the use of flag and patriotic imagery in the wake of 9/11.
Baden, 54, teaches photography at Boston College. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Guggenheim Museum in New York; and other institutions.
Baden said there are three fundamental aspects to the project in addition to obsession: mortality, incremental change (and its relationship to artistic Minimalism), and the dynamic between perfection and imperfection. "There's something heroic about it," gallery owner Howard Yezerski said of Baden's project. "You'd think it's about narcissism, but it's not. It's about the act of living. This is not a narcissistic guy. Karl cuts his own hair. He's not wrapped up in his own appearance."
Each print, dated on the front and signed on the back, sells for $10. About 350 have been purchased so far. Yezerski said many buyers have chosen self-portraits taken on dates that have some personal significance.
Thomas Gustainis, a photographer and educator who lives in Jamaica Plain, bought the self-portrait from Oct. 15, 2006, the day Gustainis was married. "One of the things that's always been interesting to me about Karl's work has been the aesthetics of intimacy and the illusion of knowing someone over a long time."
Once sold, a print is not replaced on the wall. This creates subtle alterations in the pictures' overall visual impact. So the exhibition, seen as a whole, doubles as a slowly evolving Minimalist installation: a kind of living grid.
Baden cited as influences on the project Richard Avedon's series of photographs of his dying father; the architectural typologies of the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher ; the Japanese artist On Kawara's "Date Paintings" series; and such Andy Warhol films of the 1960s as "Sleep, " which simply shows a man sleeping for five hours .
Originally, there were 7,305 self-portraits in the show. Twenty times 365 equals 7,300. But that doesn't factor in leap years. Since the show includes both the first Feb. 23 and the last, there should be 7,306 pictures. Baden missed a day. The date was Oct. 15, 1991.
"It was for a prosaic reason," Baden said. He was teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. "It's an hour's drive. I'm a late riser. I had to rush to get out of the house. 'I'll do it when I get back,' I thought, and I forgot.
"But that's all right. It's one of the tenets of the project, actually. It's the difference between being perfect and being human. Almost all rug-weaving cultures in the world include a single error in each carpet. That day was my one error -- so far, anyway."
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com. 
