More Unraveling

ADAMS COUNTY, CO – FEBRUARY 02: Adams Country sheriff’s deputy Greg Barnett (R), supervises as an eviction team carries out a family’s belongings during a foreclosure eviction February 2, 2009 in Adams County, Colorado. The family had been renting from an owner, who collected the monthly payments but had stopped paying his mortgage, according to renter Mary Ann Smith. The bank foreclosed on the property and called the Adams County sheriff’s department to supervise the eviction. The family managed to borrow enough money to rent another house for themselves and their four children, she said, but not in time to avoid eviction. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

ADAMS COUNTY, CO – FEBRUARY 02: Houshold items lay in a front yard after an eviction team carried out a family’s belongings during a foreclosure eviction February 2, 2009 in Adams County, Colorado. The family had been renting from an owner, who collected the monthly payments but had stopped paying his mortgage, according to renter Mary Ann Smith. The bank foreclosed on the property and called the Adams County sheriff’s department to supervise the eviction. They managed to borrow enough money to rent another house for themselves and their four children, she said, but not in time to avoid eviction. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

ADAMS COUNTY, CO – FEBRUARY 02: Mary Ann Smith looks over an album of familiy photos after an eviction team removed all of her possessions from her foreclosed house on February 2, 2009 in Adams County, Colorado. Smith said she and her husband had been renting from an owner, who collected the monthly payments but had stopped paying his mortgage. The bank foreclosed on the property and called the Adams County sheriff’s department to supervise the eviction. They managed to borrow enough money to rent another house for themselves and their four children, she said, but not in time to avoid eviction. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Here at BAGnewsNotes yesterday, Northwestern Communications professor Bob Hariman posted and discussed a very powerful image by Getty photographer John Moore.

The photo was taken in Adams County, Colorado, and featured Mary Ann Smith. The scene was the front yard of her house — or her former house. After the owner she had been renting from stopped paying the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property and Adams County sheriff’s representatives showed up and evicted her.

The depth, acceleration and cruelty of this recession is unlike any I’ve seen before … and I fear, it’s still early. In my practice, many people are at the employment and financial precipice, and it’s supremely painful to absorb. What makes the situation even more upsetting, however, is how difficult it is for the media to simply and sensitively, without patronization or drama, reflect what’s going on.

It’s for that reason I find John’s photos to be truly poignant. To give them their due, and to extend the eloquent words Bob offered yesterday, I felt it important to offer a few more images of Ms. Smith’s eviction.

In each of these close ups, Moore captures the raw edge of not just one person’s experience, but the tone and quality of what is happening in towns and cities across the nation. It is one thing to witness the family possessions constituted on the lawn. Seeing it from the inside, with this room torn apart and its contents carted off gets closer to the true violence of it. The second image, with its “throw away” allusion to spirituality references both the cheap morality as well the more existential questions about what is going on. And then, of all things to be floating in this chaos, the baby album speaks to how little place, time and history is counting for now.

(image: John Moore/Getty Images. February 2, 2009 in Adams County, Colorado.)

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