Vintage Bomber,

The bomber jacket is a garment imbued with history. Originally developed as light, warm functional clothing for military pilots, its predecessors were leather and cotton flight jackets used in the World Wars I and II. In the 1950s, a nylon version was introduced to the market, and the bomber jacket as we know it today was born. Since then, hardly any subculture seems to have passed it by—from punks to skinheads, from hardcore techno to hip-hop. Today it has become a fashion item suitable for the masses, its military origins almost forgotten. Seth Price is interested in such shifts in meaning. The bomber jacket, molded in gold-colored plastic, looks as if it had been carelessly removed and tossed aside. But this impression is deceptive: to evoke this effect, Price had to painstakingly prepare and stuff the jacket. This absence of the human body is what lies at the heart of this work. Like a death mask, “Vintage Bomber” represents the disappearance of the individual—vanishing, in this case, behind a façade of (fashionable) self-dramatization.