Graffiti & the Great Recession

I was browsing through the Huffington Post's "capture the recession" photo feature, where they have asked the public to post images in it's flickr pool. While many evocative images have been submitted, I am most struck by the pervasive sense of absence in so many of them; empty wheelchairs, empty shopping cart, and row upon row of empty homes and boarded up businesses. Loss can be found everywhere, but it seems like this Great Recession has stripped the streets of people.

It's common to see graffiti used as shorthand for "economically depressed," so I wasn't surprised to find the two photos below. In fact, both ranked in the top five when I found them earlier today. What is unusual is seeing graffiti used as the visual voice of Main Street.

Taken near the intersection of Bell, Eagle and Dallas Dr. in Denton, TX.
(Flickr/Rich Anderson)

These scrawled messages seem to be coming directly from the American people. The word "recession" is meaningless for the unemployed, uninsured people of this country; it doesn't begin to describe the street level challenges they face every day.

Corner of Canal And Greenwich , NYC NY (Flickr/Mark Smith)

The stencil in the image above makes the tagger step into action for all Americans. And with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. posting record earnings today and reaching all-time highs less than a year after the firm took $10 billion in U.S. rescue funds, that tagger is asking a question we would all like to know.

-- Post From PWS, the Public Square.