A Gallery Talk with Photography Professor Karl Baden

The McMullen invites guests to explore the history of self-portraiture in Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement with Boston College photography professor Karl Baden. Baden will share examples of self-portraits beginning with the invention of the medium from the mid-nineteenth century up to the present, including examples from today’s selfie phenomenon. Within this timeline, he will illustrate how issues of identity, ethnicity, and gender emerged within the self-portrait practice, with an emphasis placed on Weems’s work, her influences, as well as images from various series by Weems that are not part of the current exhibition.

Free; open to the public; register at https://goo.gl/GEWg1f

Karl Baden has been on the faculty at Boston College since 1989, and has been visiting faculty at Harvard University, Rhode Island School of Design, Clark University, and Phillips Academy at Andover. His photographs have been widely exhibited, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Institute of Contemporary Art, DeCordova Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Musée Batut, France; Photokina, Cologne, Germany; and the Photographers’ Gallery, London. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Kenan Foundation, and Light Work Visual Studies. His photographs and visual books are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Addison Gallery of American Art; Polaroid International Collection, the Guggenheim Museum Library, New York Public Library and Boston Public Library.

Among other photographic projects, Baden has made a photograph of his face every day since February 23, 1987. In 2000, he was the subject of a twenty-six-year retrospective exhibition at Light Work Visual Studies.