Your Turn: Recession Memorial

The other day, we had a discussion here about Anthony Suau’s World Press winning photo, and the merits and ethics of relating the housing meltdown to a war. Today, I’m interested in your reactions to this image. It shows the photos of laid off workers posted outside a German microchip plant. (Caption below.)

A few questions: Is this a memorial? How close a parallel is there between the posting of photos of recession “victims” and the public posting of the missing and dead following 9/11 or Mumbai? How effective is this image in the media sphere? And what (as opposed to who) is and isn’t working for you here?

from : NYT Pictures of the Day, February 17

(image: Norbert Millauer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. caption: Two women looked at portraits of employees of the bankrupt German memory chip maker Qimonda fixed on a fence at the company’s plant in Dresden, in eastern Germany, (The text near the portraits reads “Every workplace has a face.”) Qimonda said a week ago that it will slash production and have to find a buyer by the end of March 2009 or else be forced to shut down)