Covering Photography

In the new January/February issue of Fine Books & Collections, I interviewed Karl Baden about his very original collection of photography books. He is a photographer by trade and has a major library of photography monographs. However, in the last few years, he's started collecting books that use iconic or fine-art photographs on the cover. Karl's interested in how art (the photograph) is transformed into marketing (the dust jacket). It's an important contribution to the study of the dust jacket, and, best of all, his collection is online at with a searchable database.

Some of you may have seen or read about Noah, who took a picture of himself every day for six years and became a YouTube star (4 million views, and counting) . This spring, Karl Baden will have taken a picture of himself everyday (but one) for TWENTY years! In addition, he has not changed his hair or grown a mustache or beard so that the only thing that changes is his face. Every one of Baden's 7000 photos is shot against the same background and he wears the same color shirt. It's a study in aging whose only comparison is the 7-Up series of documentaries.

Someone needs to give Karl a grant to have his 7000 images scanned and made into a video (the secret to Noah's is that his eyes stay in the same place, so it's not just a matter of scanning - each one has to be placed individually).

Comments

[mocanlagunas]

This happened a couple of weeks ago to Jessica. She went to the library to pick up 2 books, one on women photographers (Focus: Five Women Photographers) and the other, Delirio, a novel in spanish by Laura Restrepo, and amazingly, both had images of Sandy Skoglund on the cover! I should have bought lotto tickets that day...

[mocanlagunas]

And...
Searching Karl's site, it shows only one book by Laura Restrepo, and the cover has a photo by Luis Gonzalez Palma, a very good friend of us!

And right now, I'm listening to Synchonicity by the Police! Creepy!