Sign Of The Times

You might have to scroll right to see the whole picture. I didn’t want to reduce it. (I mean, isn’t that tendency part of the problem?)

What makes the picture standout, of course, beyond its anonymity and scale, is how archetypal it is. I’m not sure — what with that chain-link fencing and the lights mounted on the long wall — if there is a correctional facility feeling to this. Maybe I pick that up simply because of the degradation involved (and/or the picture just before it in the series).

From Sacramento Bee Multimedia. See the “Searching For A Job” series here.   

(image: Justin Sullivan/Getty. caption: Line of job seekers snakes around the Whitcomb Hotel as they wait to enter the California Job Journal HIREvent Feb. 10, in San Francisco, Calif. With the nation’s unemployment rate at 7.6 percent, hundreds of job seekers flocked to the California Job Journal HIREvent job fair where approximately 1,700 jobs from a variety of different companies were available. Getty Images / Justin Sullivan)