Nearly 500 Coats
2007
Installation - two-sided photocopies, wire and nails
8.5’h X 5.5’w X 3.5’d
Inspired by a particularly compelling but also historically incidental image of nearly a thousand coats hanging on the exterior of a building in Denmark, 1936, I decided that I wanted to take this marginal photograph and disproportionately give it a considerable amount of attention. Given the little information that was provided with the photo (date, location, article it first appeared in, etc) I was left to wonder what current events, at that time, could have caused a clothier to sell off such a large amount of inventory. My research findings included a number of socio-political variables that may have contributed to the scenario depicted in the photograph. But the truth of the matter is, from my vantage point I could not accurately discern what was factually connected to the event in the photo and what was coincidental. I spent two hours every evening for one month cutting out front & back photocopies of coats from images I found on the Internet, specifically eBay auctions, to create the installation Nearly 500 Coats. Though my investigation intended to pin-point what was going on during the time in which the photograph was taken, it instead lead me to consider how new narratives of history are derived and whether they are ever any more factual than the ones that preceded them.