The Economy in Pictures

By Amy Eagleburger

John Pendygraft, a photographer for the St. Petersburg Times, used a series of photo essays to take the reality of an eroding middle class from percentages to faces. The result, “Paycheck to Paycheck,” is a moving portrait of just a few of the thousands of Americans who have fallen on harder economic times.

For the project, Pendygraft photographed Tampa Bay residents struggling to make ends meet. Those profiled are young and old, single and married and include a musician, a prostitute and a nun working in her retirement years.

The first photo gallery went up last May. Since then, 14 other photo stories have been added.

“The idea for the series came out of a conversation with my grandfather during a family reunion,” Pendygraft said. “He’s one of these America's Greatest Generation guys with strong values that come from living through the Depression. He was talking about how American savings is in the negative, the worst since the Depression, and how building the life he managed to build as a blue-collar worker would be almost impossible today.

“He felt that the squeeze on the middle class is an elephant in the living room, and if we could talk about it openly, it might make a difference.”

Shortly after that conversation, Pendygraft’s grandfather passed away and the project became a way to honor his memory and his perspective on the middle class.

The first finished story was written about a single father who was raising a 2-year-old child while studying for a degree in business administration. Pendygraft found them by calling WorkNet, an unemployment service, and asking for people who were motivated to improve their situation.

“Meeting the people was pretty much just pounding the pavement,” he said. “Some I met on assignments and some I met doing things like hanging out in a maternity store, knocking on doors of foreclosures, or spending time at an unemployment center.”

The finished photographs are not meant to just be sad stories to pull at the heart strings of readers. Instead, the individuals are relatable to the general population and often express a great deal of hope as they continue to dream and work for a better future.

“It can be about hardship but we wanted them … to be positive people that people would identify with,” Pendygraft said. “Kind of the idea that we’re all in this boat together. These aren’t particularly far to the left or right of the bell curve.”

Finding the subjects for the stories was not always easy but Pendygraft kept asking until he found people willing to share.

“I learned sharing personal finances is a tough sell, and got a lot of rejections,” he said. “But those that were willing I think really offered something to our readers.”

With some of the first stories over a year old, Pendygraft provided updated photos and information about how the individual situations have changed over the course of a year.

He also is continuing to produce new galleries and looking for new subjects. As far as he is concerned, the project is ongoing with no set end date.

“We’ll keep going,” Pendygraft said. “When we got started we wanted to get people started (talking) about the elephant in the living room. It wasn’t something that was really discussed. …Now (middle class troubles are) right on the front of The New York Times.”

Want to check out Pendygraft’s work? Click here to view the photo stories.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism