DAY 60

SOCIAL & POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Financial Disaster

VISUALLY DESCRIBING WHAT WENT WRONG

As far as national financial disasters go, photographing them presents a problem—how many photographs of desperate faces, empty pockets, and “for sale” signs convey the real issue? A photojournalist’s job is to illustrate and capture the moment but when the moment is something that happens behind the scenes, internally, and is so deeply rooted and not fully understood by those perpetuating it, much less those being affected, how does one explain it in a photograph? Economic disasters, which financial disasters are, are not a visually ripe topic. They tend toward the dilapidated, the panicked, and the obvious.

Deeply buried subjects push a photographer to dig further and deeper than what is seen on the surface. The everyday and the novelty are up for examination when looking at representing “what went wrong.” What went wrong is tied to political power, political power used to push inappropriate, disastrous bills through Congress, push nations into wars, and to lobby and sway Congress toward a desired result that may have nothing to do with prosperity and true nation building, and more to do with greed. —MLR

Cashier handing money out, Riggs Bank, 1938. Photo by Harris & Ewing; courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.