Over the past days, this image by Brian Ulrich was subject of two blog posts, one by the artist, and another one at No Caption Needed. Brian writes “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea that a big interest of mine is the ability of contemporary photography to act as propaganda for a like-minded cause.” I’m sure the word “propaganda” will be offputting for many people, but you can easily replace it with something less loaded. His suggestions are more relevant than ever, but I’m not sure how optimistic I am about them being put into action - it’s hard to see a Jacob Riis in the age of Facebook and Fox News. John Lucaites of No Caption Needed talks about photography almost along the same lines, with just a slightly different angle: “The question is, how do you give presence to an economic problem, particularly when it is animated, at least in part, by a psychology of risk?” Right now, it looks that at best we’re going to see a very slow economic recovery (where it will take years to create the jobs back that were lost), at worst there will be a double-dip recession. John’s question is unlikely to go away any time soon.