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February 24, 2009

Sign Of The Times

Jobseekers.jpg

You might have to scroll right to see the whole picture. I didn’t want to reduce it. (I mean, isn’t that tendency part of the problem?)

What makes the picture standout, of course, beyond its anonymity and scale, is how archetypal it is. I’m not sure — what with that chain-link fencing and the lights mounted on the long wall — if there is a correctional facility feeling to this. Maybe I pick that up simply because of the degradation involved (and/or the picture just before it in the series).

From Sacramento Bee Multimedia. See the “Searching For A Job” series here.   

(image: Justin Sullivan/Getty. caption: Line of job seekers snakes around the Whitcomb Hotel as they wait to enter the California Job Journal HIREvent Feb. 10, in San Francisco, Calif. With the nation’s unemployment rate at 7.6 percent, hundreds of job seekers flocked to the California Job Journal HIREvent job fair where approximately 1,700 jobs from a variety of different companies were available. Getty Images / Justin Sullivan)

  • Chris

    I particularly liked the second photo after the one you featured in the series that shows a man holding the “California Job Journal”. He’s giving the camera The Finger!

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p01053714e4e4970b Karen H.

    this reminds me of the photos after the “Rodney King” riots in Los Angeles of people lining up for blocks to get into the post office. I tried to find a shot of that, they were taken from a helicopter, but nothing came up.

  • jtfromBC

    the seen and the unseen or going into hock big time
    Famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has secured a $15 million loan from a United States firm, using the copyright, negatives and contract rights to all of her work as collateral.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066891.html

  • yg

    that wall is just begging for a mural.
    the words inscribed on the FDR memorial, reminded me obama concluded his speech saying something like we need to live up to the words inscribed around the walls of this building. what are those words?
    another image from that era:
    http://newdeal.feri.org/library/ab32.htm