Eleanor Antin, 100 Boots Facing the Sea

Eleanor Antin, 100 Boots Facing the Sea, 1971, from the series 100 Boots, a set of 51 photo-postcards, 1971; photograph; halftone photo-postcard, Collection SFMOMA

MS. ANTIN: But I was tired of traveling into New York to show. I thought I’ve got to do a piece that can get around the world without me, so I can stay here. I loved old San Diego before the McMansions came in. I lived over the ocean. I didn’t even drive in those early days. I hitched. You could hitch in those days. It was before Charles Manson. It was a different world.

Solana Beach and Del Mar, they were little beach towns. Del Mar had a certain cache because movie stars used to go there. Mary Pickford’s little pink cottage is still there across from the post office. Solana Beach was just a little sleepy town of kid surfers and older people who were retired.

Enter 100 Boots. My new hero.

I bought 50 pairs of boots, big men’s boots, in the Army-Navy surplus. I think they cost $200 in those days for all of them. Now they would cost a fortune. It was six cents for a postage stamp, for a first class postcard. In the middle of the piece, it became eight cents. I didn’t like that. I was indignant.

But I put together a mailing list. When I had a pretty big one, I started mailing out my 100 Boots and I didn’t have to leave town. All I had to do was shoot them and print them up as postcards. Suddenly they hit all over the place. They were written about all over the country. Like The Washington Post did this interesting thing. They’d print a different Boot image on each page. The caption would suggest the reader go on to see the next image on another page. Then the next one and the next one. Then people would write to the paper ask if Eleanor Antin would put them on her mailing list. The paper forwarded the letters to me and I’d add the names to my mailing list.

Some people would say, stop harassing me, go away, I hate you, take me off your mailing list. Some people, when they’d move would let me know their new mailbox, their new address. I would make the changes in my mailing list. Other people wouldn’t and when their cards were returned, they were removed. The piece went on for two-and-a-half years. It hit so big.

Read on.

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