Documents the most ubiquitous, although possibly least noticed, portrait in the United States: a former president's visage adorning a one-cent coin introduced on the occasion of his centennial. Although the sitter's reputation as one of the most respected and revered political leaders in the country's history remains intact, the coin itself does not command the same respect, suffering the indignity of being the denomination most likely to be found under a couch cushion or left on the edge of a sidewalk. In the early nineties, coins found on the streets of New York were collected and a macro lens focused on the severely nicked, scarred and oxidized profile, creating close-up portraits of the portrait that challenged ideas of history, value and legacy. 'I shot the coins on a copy-stand with a raking light; I would take the film to a lab in Chinatown that made small, white-bordered prints. Though I was not making much revenue from them, I thought of them in some way as my own counterfeit, a deeply satisfying reverie of self-sufficiency, a bit like the shit-to-gold fantasy whereupon the dirtier and grimier the coin, the greater its potential for transformation and surprise.' This book is the only publication to feature the entire collection of one hundred images, other than the original suite which exists only in an edition of three.