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Long before they were called selfies, Karl Baden snapped a simple black and white photo of himself. Then he repeated it every day for the next three decades.
在“自拍”出现前，卡尔·拜登就每天拍下1张自己的黑白照片，接下来30年，他每天都这样做。
Baden's "Every Day" project officially turns 30 on Thursday and he says he has no intention of stopping. The stark contemplation on mortality and aging has prompted some to dub the Boston College professor the unwitting "father of the selfie."
拜登的“每日”计划到上周四正式满30年，但他表示没想停下来。拜登这种忠实审视死亡与衰老的做法，让他获得“自拍之父”的封号。他是波士顿学院的一名教授。
He recognizes the ubiquity of the selfie has helped raise the profile of the project, which has been exhibited in art galleries in Boston, New York City and elsewhere over the years.
他承认自拍风潮帮助他的项目提高了知名度，这些年来，照片在波士顿、纽约市等地的美术馆展出。
"If it wasn't for the selfie craze, I'd probably be slogging along in anonymity as usual," Baden joked this week. "Which is sort of what I had expected."
他本周开玩笑说：“如果不是自拍热，我大概会和以前一样匿名拍照片，那也是我之前希望的。”
What makes the project work is that it reflects a number of universal themes, from death to man's obsession with immortalizing himself in some way, said Howard Yezerski, a Boston gallery owner who has exhibited the project on two occasions.
曾两次展出照片的波士顿一家画廊的主人Howard Yezerski表示，拜登的照片能一直拍下去，是因为照片反映了很多普遍的主题，从死亡到人类某种对不朽的执迷等等。
"It's both personal and universal at the same time," he said. "He's recording a life, or at least one aspect of it that we can all relate to because we're all in same boat. We're all going to die."
他说：“这是个人的，同时也是普遍的。他在记录一段生命，或者至少是生命的一方面，我们都与此相关，因为我们都在同一条船上，都会死亡。”
Baden, 64, quietly launched his project on Feb. 23, 1987, the day after Andy Warhol died and nearly two decades before Facebook emerged. He tries to remain faithful to that first image, posing with the same neutral facial expression and using the same 35mm camera, tripod, backdrop and lighting.
1987年2月23日，现年64岁的拜登悄然开始了他的自拍计划。摄影师安迪·沃霍尔前一天刚去世，距离脸谱网问世还有将近20年。他尝试拍下与第一张相同的照片，采用同样的面部表情，使用相同的35毫米相机、三脚架、背景和灯光。
"The act itself is like brushing your teeth," he said. "I'll just take the picture and get on with the rest of my day. It's not a holy ritual or anything."
他说：“拍照就像刷牙。我拍下照片，然后继续过一天的生活。这并非任何神圣仪式。”
Baden has taken other pains to maintain the same aesthetic. He has consciously not grown a beard or mustache, and his hair remains simply styled.
为了让照片保持一贯的风格，拜登还付出了其他代价。他有意不蓄胡须，发型也一直很简单。
"I have to turn all these variables into constants so that I'm not distracting from the aging process," Baden explained.
拜登解释说：“这些都保持不变，这样才能看出照片所表现的衰老过程。”
Besides mortality, Baden says the project touches on the notions of obsession, incremental change and perfection.
除了死亡，拜登说照片还触及了痴迷、渐进的改变和完美的概念。
"As much as I try to make every picture the same, I fail every day," he said. "There's always something that's a little different, aside from the aging process."
他说：“我尽可能每天都拍一样的照片，但每天都失败。除了衰老，总有那么点儿东西是不同的。”
Approaching 11,000 photos, the changes in Baden's appearance over time don't appear dramatic. But in 2001, Baden underwent chemotherapy to treat prostate cancer and became noticeably thinner.
在大约1.1万张照片中，拜登的外貌随着时间的改变没有太剧烈。但在2001年，拜登接受了治疗前列腺癌的化疗，明显消瘦了。
The cancer is now in remission and, as later pictures show, Baden quickly bounced back. The only lasting change from that time, he says, has been his eyebrows; they never quite grew back.
目前他的病情缓解，就像随后的照片中那样，拜登迅速恢复了。他说，那段时间带来的唯一持久变化，就是他的眉毛，它们没有再长回原来的样子。
