It is always a powerful image when it can evoke an emotional response out of you. In this particular image I can see my struggle, my frustration, and I can hear myself let out an exasperated yet knowing sigh that my summer calendar looked almost exactly like this. However, this photograph also comforts me by telling me that I am not alone. It seems that the majority of the United States is dealing with this desperate need to find work in today’s dismal economy. Visually and culturally, people can understand and identify with this image and can draw people together.
Robert Hariman and John Luis Lucaites have said photography “imitates only those activities that are already occurring repeatedly in the society” (2007, p.32). As a starving college student, I deal with this every day. For two years now I have been looking for a job, any job in a small-town where several businesses are closing down and the economy seems to be rapidly deteriorating and I am here praying that America is not going to be thrust into another Great Depression in the next decade or so. I had come to America a few years ago because I have been told over and over again that there is more opportunity and more jobs available. I was very happy when I got my first job only to have to quit a while later because I had been taking over 20 units per semester in school in order to graduate. Now, that I am graduating this December and seeing my friends who have gotten laid off over and over again, I am terrified that my post-graduate schedule will read the same as the one above. Regardless, I’ll have faith and hopefully, in the next few years, I will be exhibiting a very different calendar.
Credit: John Sherffius, Boulder Daily Camera.
That is an unbelievably true picture of what is happening in America – brilliant!
It is always a powerful image when it can evoke an emotional response out of you. In this particular image I can see my struggle, my frustration, and I can hear myself let out an exasperated yet knowing sigh that my summer calendar looked almost exactly like this. However, this photograph also comforts me by telling me that I am not alone. It seems that the majority of the United States is dealing with this desperate need to find work in today’s dismal economy. Visually and culturally, people can understand and identify with this image and can draw people together.
Robert Hariman and John Luis Lucaites have said photography “imitates only those activities that are already occurring repeatedly in the society” (2007, p.32). As a starving college student, I deal with this every day. For two years now I have been looking for a job, any job in a small-town where several businesses are closing down and the economy seems to be rapidly deteriorating and I am here praying that America is not going to be thrust into another Great Depression in the next decade or so. I had come to America a few years ago because I have been told over and over again that there is more opportunity and more jobs available. I was very happy when I got my first job only to have to quit a while later because I had been taking over 20 units per semester in school in order to graduate. Now, that I am graduating this December and seeing my friends who have gotten laid off over and over again, I am terrified that my post-graduate schedule will read the same as the one above. Regardless, I’ll have faith and hopefully, in the next few years, I will be exhibiting a very different calendar.