In 1981, Jacob moved to Portland, ME, and lived in a third floor walkup on Munjoy Hill, across from the fire station. He was unable to find work as a photographer, so did manual labor and subsisted on food stamps. Angry, hungry, and with too much time on his hands, Jacob inserted two pieces of thin tape inside his Exacta, just over the film holder, like a crosshairs in a gun, and photographed people on the street below. He titled the series Shooting at Strangers.
Riding Beggar ceased publication in the 1990s. A complete run of PostHype was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1987. Incomplete sets are held by the Getty Research Institute (acquired with the Jean Brown, Bern Porter, Carlo Pittore, and other people’s papers) and active mail art archives such as the Artpool Art Research Center.
The Riding Beggar archive is housed with the John P. Jacob Papers at the Beinecke Rare Books Library, Yale University.
