CARL BRADEN
I was surfing through the Wisconsin Historical Archives, like you do, and came across the above image of Carl Braden.
Braden and his wife Anne Braden were journalists-turned-activists who were part of the union movements and later the radical interracial left of the 40s and 50s. The Braden’s bought a house on behalf of the Wade family, their African American friends in suburban Louisville, Kentucky. When neighbours found out a Black family had moved in they burnt a cross outside the house and went after the Braden’s. Carl was charged with sedition in what is known as the Wade Case. Carl was sentenced to 15 years and served 8 months, eventually paying $40,000 to get out.
The Anne Braden Institute (ABI) now operates out of the University of Louisville. The ABI has a Flickr stream of scenes from her full life.
KARL BADEN
Karl Baden has chosen to put himself in the picture everyday for 24 years. Somewhere he has set up a self-imposed mugshot identification room. All these can be seen at his website Every Day.
It’s worth noting that Baden and Noah Kalina are the original and best for these vaguely masturbatory, mirrored versions of themselves in time-lapse. Others include a girl with a nice set of scarves, two dudes (one and two) with beard-growing missions, a guy with an 800 day commitment and Homer Simpson.
There is also Diego Goldberg who self-documents he and his family once a year, every year on the 17th June.
Baden has established a unique set of data for a limited case study in visual anthropology. The date runs like an I.D. number at the bottom of his shots.
As Baden describes the project, he removes emotion and variables from the photography, just as police or criminal justice photographers do for mugshots:
Every Day is performed within a set of guidelines. […] Reserved exclusively for this procedure are a single camera, tripod, strobe and white backdrop. […] I use the same type of high-resolution film (Kodak Technical Pan until it was discontinued in 2007, Ilford Pan F since then) and the same strobe lighting. The camera is always set and focused at the same distance. When taking the picture, I try to center myself in the frame, maintain a neutral expression and look straight into the lens.
Baden lists the key tenets of Every Day to be mortality; incremental change; obsession (its relation to both the psyche and art-making); and the difference between attempting to be perfect, and being human. I’ll grant him those things, but I also wonder is does the project not feel like a sentence?
And my question to you, readers, is what should we make of this type of project? It could be just inventive fun or it might be one of the most present-minded approaches to photography there is? I can’t decide.
Prison Photography 
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July 31, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Karl Baden
thanks for sending me this, pete, and thanks for your provocative question. the simple, incomplete answer is: no, it feels like a lifelong project, not a life sentence.
a life sentence, i presume, would be an involuntary imposition from another entity [ie, the state, feds, etc]. ‘every day’ is a self-generated endeavor, entirely voluntary and, i might add, not a form of punishment [some may disagree with me on that, but we all have our likes, dislikes, and quirks]. the act of photographing my face each day takes all of five minutes. it is the actual presentation of the work, in a gallery, museum or periodical, that can involve a good deal of time. while digital applications and the internet may help expedite this process, it may be worth mentioning that the medium i have always used for this project is film, and when i started in 1987, the internet was still the arpanet.
i also appreciate your taking the time to mention a number of the motivating factors for ‘every day’; mortality, obsession, etc…. particularly since this idea of the daily self-portrait really seems itself to have gone viral in the past 10 years, it is often seen as one of the myriad forms of ‘fun’ or distraction available in our much mediated age, and perhaps in some cases that is accurate. to me, however [and, as you might imagine, i’ve had many years to think about this], the idea of ‘every day’, seems to involve one of the more essential things one can do with a medium which is fundamentally about description and the passage of time.
after almost 25 years, i find the results both interesting and boring, reassuring and a bit frightening [reassuring in the sense that it’s like punching life’s clock every day; showing up to spend another day on the planet… frightening, well, that should be more obvious]. curiously, the project has – for me – become less about my own visage, and more about how each date intersects with someone else’s life [explaining this here would take some time, if you are interested, you may find information here:
http://kbeveryday2.blogspot.com/2009/02/howard-yezerski-gallery-may-2007.html
and then here:
http://www.kbeveryday3.blogspot.com/
finally, an important reason for beginning the ‘every day’ project is quite simple: i wanted to see what would happen. well, fortunately for me [ and i’ve had a scare or two… if interested, see here: http://vimeo.com/21668193%5D,
life goes on.
best
kb
August 30, 2011 at 9:34 am
77 | vendofoto
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