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A photo a day: Watch this man age (and experiment with facial hair) over 16 years
He took a photo of himself every day since 1 October 1998.
AT 22 YEARS old, Jonathan Keller Keller decided to start a project which involved taking a photograph of himself every day.
Sixteen years later, he’s still going – and still getting attention.
His latest video upload from seven months ago, entitled ‘Idiot continues to take daily self-portrait for 16 years despite better projects, longer projects, more popular projects, his face’, has started doing the Internet rounds this week.
The American artist said he began the project on 1 October 1998 after buying an expensive new camera – and being questioned by his then-girlfriend about whether he’d use it every day.
The end result is oddly compelling. Watch how he changes, experiments with facial hair and ages over the years.
(Warning for those sensitive to motion, the images in the video move at a fast pace.)
JK Keller / Vimeo
And how long does he think he’ll continue.
“The project will continue until the day I die,” he says. “Only then will it be complete, and worth its true value. Hopefully the completion date is far off, but you never know, right? Unfortunately, I won’t ever see it finished. It’s really a heckuva Catch-22 I’ve set up for myself.”
It’s not a time-consuming project, he continues. “The amount of time I devote to this project is minimal, to be honest. One minute a day to snap the day’s photo, and 30 minutes every 10-12 days to get the photos from the camera to the site.”
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