Scenes from the recession are rarely heartening. If anything, looking at photographs of Americans being removed from foreclosed homes, having cars repossessed, or lined up at the unemployment office, feels predatory or even obscene. But at their best, these photographs should remind us that times are still incredibly tough, regardless of what out-of-touch ‘experts’ like Larry Summers have to say. Having experienced job loss firsthand this past summer (Read: Fear & Self-Loathing in America’s Rust Belt, Part I and Part II), I am well aware of what day-to-day survival entails. For me, the ability to quickly adapt to my new reality and hustle day and night to pay bills and put food on the table, allowed me to weather a tough but life-changing six months of unemployment. That, and of course, luck. After sending out countless resumes, I eventually found work. Many are not so fortunate. One such case is the story of Harvey Lesser, an unemployed software developer with chronic health problems who was recently evicted from his apartment in Boulder, Colorado (pictured below).
Sheriff's deputies wake Harvey Lesser, 58, with a court order to evict him from his apartment on December 11, 2009 in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images North America)
Michael Shaw, over at Bag News Notes, provides a sobering analysis of Getty Images photographer John Moore’s shots of Harvey Lesser being evicted. He begins by citing a Frank Rich column in the New York Times that was inspired by the film “Up in the Air”:
What gives our Great Recession its particular darkness … is the disconnect between the corporate culture that is dictating the firing and the rest of us. In the shorthand of the day, it’s the dichotomy between Wall Street and Main Street, though that oversimplifies the divide. This disconnect isn’t just about the huge gap in income between the financial sector and the rest of America. Nor is it just about the inequities of a government bailout that rescued the irresponsible bankers who helped crash the economy while shortchanging the innocent victims of their reckless gambles. What “Up in the Air” captures is less didactic. It makes palpable the cultural and even physical chasm that opened up between the two Americas for years before the financial collapse.
The private-equity deal makers who bought and sold once-solid companies like trading cards, saddling them with debt, never saw the workers whose jobs were shredded by their cunning games of financial looting. The geniuses in Washington and on Wall Street who invented junk mortgages and then bundled and sold them as securities didn’t live in the same neighborhoods as the mortgagees, small investors and retirees left holding the bag once the housing bubble burst.
Those at the top are separated from the consequences of their actions. (via Frank Rich)
Shaw then goes on to add his own commentary to the discussion:
The words above, from this morning’s Frank Rich column inspired by the movie “Up in the Air,” seem to speak directly to this photo by Getty’s tireless recession watchdog, John Moore. In this instance, Boulder resident Harvey Lesser – an unemployed software developer with chronic health problems related to obesity — was woken up on Friday by Sheriff deputies with a court order to evict him. Having burned through his savings, Harvey had stopped paying rent.
Shaw ends his post with a thought that accurately sums up the situation Wall Street has created for us: “…the fallout continues desperately, disasterously and mostly under-the-radar.”
Hard luck stories like that of Harvey Lesser make their rounds on the Internet and then they vanish. We all care for a moment, appalled by what we see in the photographs flickering on our computer screens, then we focus again on our own survival. But where is Lesser today? Is he living in his car? Is he fighting for a bed in a homeless shelter? Perhaps Getty photographer John Moore will provide an update. Perhaps we will never know. The shame is that we are all Harvey Lesser. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But one day we will be in a similar situation — on the receiving end of a severance package or eviction notice or a foreclosure letter — and who will care for us?
View John Moore’s slideshow on Harvey Lesser’s eviction
