Click hereto view a slide show of recession photographs taken by Slate readers. Click here to submit your own.
A few weeks ago, Slate launched “Shoot the Recession,” a project in which we asked our readers to help us document the economic crisis in photographs. We invited you to submit images to the group page we set up on the photo-sharing site Flickr. You responded by sending in poignant, surprising, and sometimes even humorous photos from across the country and around the globe. Earlier in March, we published a slide show of the best photos we’d received so far. Today, we’re publishing a second. We’d love to publish a third. So keep the photos coming.
Liquidation sales, foreclosures, and recession specials have continued to be well-represented in the Flickr pool, but the latest batch of photos also captures more abstract symbols of the recession. When the economy goes south, it seems, folks start seeing the crunch everywhere they look. Did this Hummer get stuck with a boot because its owner could no longer afford to fill it with gas? Or simply because he forgot Tuesday is street-cleaning? Tough to say, but also tough to deny the photo’s wry symbolism. Are these puppies on sale because Americans are struggling to put food on the table, never mind in the doggie dish? Or just to make room for a new shipment of Portuguese water dogs? Again, hard to know for sure, but hard not to see it as a sign of the times.
Click here to see other new submissions to Slate’s Flickr pool, including a “For Rent” sign in the window of an empty real estate office, a Gucci sign missing its G, and a Dairy Queen sign far from home. Click hereto launch the latest slide show of great photos of the recession—some symbolic, most not so—taken by Slate readers.
