Flashback.

One of the greatest pictures of the American Depression is not one protraying migrant workers or starving children, moving and deeply tragic as those are. No, Walker Evans’s ‘Damaged’ is very much the iconic picture of that sad era.

It was Evans’s masterpiece that was playing in my head when I snapped the picture below. This was two days ago. It is black and white. That is in keeping with the poverty of the neighborhood. Click the picture for the Google StreetView of the jewelry store. It is stuck between a Goodwill shop and a Christian Science Reading Room. Google doubtless refreshes its StreetView snaps from time to time, but their current one was taken when the awning was enjoying better days, before our latest Depression.

During the current Depression. Ken Jewelry, 2285 Mission Street, SF. D700, 24mm lens.

Evans’s masterpiece? How could one image better tell of America’s fall from grace in the Great Depression?

During the previous Depression. Damaged, by Walker Evans, around 1930.