[Leica] Recession/crisis

[leica at ralgo.nl (bruce golding)]

that's some resumee, lawrence.

but what has replaced this decline? or has youth just moved away, and  
whereto?

b.

On 14-apr-2009, at 20:30, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:

> There is very little visual evidence of the recession in New York's  
> Hudson Valley. Sure, there is much less new home building than  
> there was a couple of years ago and a few more day workers,  
> possibly illegals, hanging around street corners waiting for jobs.  
> But it is hard to photograph what isn't there. There are no  
> protests, no riots, no storming of the state offices. No one is  
> selling apples from a pushcart. But then we had our recession  
> decades ago. Because of easy water transportation the Hudson River  
> valley was the U.S. industrial heartland for almost 200 years. But  
> with railways, highways, and air travel that no longer mattered.  
> Locals are fond of saying that the Hudson Valley reached its  
> economic zenith during the Civil War and it has been downhill ever  
> since.
>
> Factories closed up or moved elsewhere. Anti-pollution legislation  
> prohibiting industrial discharge into the river was the final  
> straw. My area lost a big distillery, food processing plants, paint  
> manufacturing, automobile assembly, a paper mill, brick making and  
> cement plants. Even the Crayola crayon company left town and moved  
> to Easton, PA. Commercial fishing for striped bass, blue crabs, and  
> even sturgeon caviar disappeared. Further upstate, entire  
> industries shut down. The Smith Corona typewriter plant moved to  
> Mexico and then closed entirely. Endicott Shoes, the country's  
> largest show factory went out of business. IBM sold its laptop  
> computer manufacturing operation to China. Finally, the lumber  
> industry was decimated as wooded areas were purchased and  
> incorporated into the Adirondack "Forever Wild" state park. (Which,  
> by the way, is three times the size of Yellowstone.) None of this  
> was high tech but steady blue collar work.
>
> The residue of lost industrialization is easy to see but it is old  
> news. Riverside towns such as Peekskill, Fishkill, Newburgh,  
> Poughkeepsie and many of those along the Erie Canal are ghosts of  
> their former vibrant self. Docks are decrepit, factories vacant,  
> some houses old and in disrepair. They make good photo ops but it  
> would be a fraud to pass them off as symbolic of the current  
> financial crisis. I walked the neighborhood looking for dramatic  
> scenes, even ordinary scenes depicting the recession, but I  
> couldn't find any. I guess I'll go back to shooting photos of  
> flowers and grandchildren.
>
> Larry Z
>
>
>
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