This was the first series that I ever burned. It was integral to the creation of the identity of FIATFIRE. The choice of using a series of 50 consecutive bills (D 05731901-DD 05731950) from 2009 was was directly related to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent unrolling of Quantitative Easing in 2009. While the banks were bailed out, because they were too big to fail, over 15 million people lost their jobs (received pink slips).

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It was important to me to actually burn these particular pieces of currency.  While most monetary expansion occurs through transfer to banks, these bills actually did emerge from the brrr printing press at the US Department of Printing and Engraving, during the first year of QE. Each bill contains the signature of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the bottom right; Geithner was a key figure in the bailout, and he's depicted in documentation of the period like the Big Short. 

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I burned these at my apartment in New York, trying to hold them, light and photograph them. I tried to burn some of them in a frying pan and then settled on a position against a few logs of wood in the fireplace. It took some of them a long time to burn. I used an accelerant causing others to burn too quickly,  Several pieces in the series are missing for this reason.

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This is how I started.