Slate's Shoot the Recession Project

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About Slate's Shoot the Recession Project

Grim economic times produce indelible images. The Great Depression calls to mind the harrowing portraits taken by Walker Evans. The downturn of the 1970s evokes images of yacht-size cars idling in line at the gas station. But what does the current economic crisis look like?

Slate is turning to our readers and to the Flickr community to find out—we want to know what the recession looks like to you. Please submit photos to this group that capture our perilous economic moment. Periodically, we will publish a selection of striking photos from the group in a slide show on Slate.

The success of this project will depend on your imagination. We welcome photos of closed stores and vacant homes; they’re clearly part of the story. But we would like to encourage participants to find surprising ways of recording this recession. Take a shot of the contents of the box you brought home with you when you were laid off. Take a shot of the handwritten sign at your local coffee shop apologizing for the price hike on scrambled eggs. Take a shot of the mechanic whose business is up because more folks are keeping their old cars.

Along with each photograph, please submit a one-sentence description of what’s in the shot and indicate what city and state it was taken in (or better yet, submit photos with geotags). And before submitting photos, read the terms and conditions of the project here.

Questions can be sent to slate.flickr@gmail.com. We’re looking forward to seeing what you’re seeing.

http://www.slate.com